“Captain!”
Moodily, Barashkukor glanced up. The rising bulk of Nin-Edin at his back, he gazed through the iron grating at the great mountain ranges rising to either side of the pass. Grey cloud still clung to the impassable peaks. Before him, beyond the outer bailey and outer defensive walls, a desolate valley ran down to the lowlands…
The distant road that wound up to this mountain pass glittered.
“Oh, shit,” Barashkukor said.
Lowland sunshine reflected back from the helms, shields, armour, and weapons of the approaching, besieging Army of Light.
3
“You’ve changed, son. I hardly know you.”
The halfling Magda emerged from behind the room’s silk screen wearing a crimson-furred velvet gown. She tied its belt firmly around her hourglass-waist.
“And I hardly expected to find you wearing that uniform.”
She walked across the room and picked up a thin roll of black pipe-weed, fitting it into a long ivory holder. Reaching up to a candleflame, she lit the pipe-weed and drew deeply. She passed her hand through her short dark hair.
“Mother, everyone knew which was going to be the winning side.”
Magda inhaled another lungful of pipe-weed. She studied her son as he sat in the chair by the window, watching for first light. His curly black hair was thickly streaked with white.
“Besides, I thought that the Army of Light had a better chance of collecting its pay arrears.”
He lounged back, fully clad; black mail-shirt glinting in the candlelight below the white of his small ruff. The favour of the Army of Light—a yellow sash—he wore tied about his left arm. His doublet and trunk-hose showed signs of wear, and the wood of his short-sword scabbard had split and been badly repaired with wire.
“You wrote that you had become wealthy.”
The halfling’s dark eyes flicked in her direction. There were lines bitten into his found face that had not been there eighteen months ago.
“Wealth doesn’t last. Gamblers had most of mine.”
“Mmm…” A little suspicious still, Magda walked to the window and stood on tiptoe to peer out. “And your brother, where is he?”
For the first time in an hour, her son smiled.
“Out there in the frost, wondering if he should come in and rescue me; and whether it’s danger that delays me, or over-indulgence in pleasure. Tonight was his turn to watch my back.”
Magda chuckled. “I’ll call Safire. We shall have hot mulled wine while we wait. I wonder how long it will take him?”
She inhaled pipe-weed smoke, becoming serious.
“I’ve been thinking. Life in Herethlion won’t be Easy Street for much longer. I give it a month before the celebrations and coronations are over—then the purge will begin. Anything with so much as a scent of corruption will be called the Dark! and banned. And that’ll take this Thieves’ Quarter with it. Believe me. I’ve seen it before.”
She breathed out a long plume of smoke.
“Fortuna is a tricky Goddess. I made an offering in her church last month for help. Behold, she sends my two sons back to me.”
Magda stubbed the pipe-weed out against the window-frame. She reached down as she crossed the room to call Safire, and squeezed her son’s small, hard bicep.
“I thought I might travel north. I shall need muscle—if I’m to set up business in a new city.”
The door of Nin-Edin’s main hall closed behind the last senior officer to enter. Ashnak leaned his bulging forearms on the podium and grinned, showing all his fangs and brass-capped tusks.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here…”
The whistle of an incoming fireball-spell drowned out his next words. The assembled orc officers hit the floorboards. The fireball air-burst, shrapnelling the glassless windows. Sparks of green flame flicked in the high-roofed hall and went out.
“Now—”
“Fuck, man, you got us into some deep shit here!” A marine corporal with “FRAG THE OFFICERS!” stencilled on her helmet-cover sprang up and screamed, “What kind of dumb motherfucker gets us shut up in a death-trap like this?”
Another orc yelled up at the podium, “You ain’t got the balls to break out of this fort!”
The orc officers snarled, pounding the butts of their assault rifles on the flagstones. Ashnak’s lip curled. “And does anyone else hold that opinion?”
Waiting for the focus of trouble to manifest itself, he was at first irritated when Company Sergeant Marukka lumbered to her feet. He started to say, “Later: let me deal with this first,” and then realised that a silence had fallen on the sixty officers present. Four of the junior lieutenants also got to their feet. The senior captains eyed Ashnak with expressions between speculation and outrage.
“You?” Ashnak demanded.
“Me.” Marukka rested a ham-sized fist on her hip. She wore green tiger-stripe camouflage, a strip of which tied up her plume of orange hair, and a black tank-top with “BORN TO FIGHT!” stencilled on the front. Deliberately, she cocked her M16. “You failed in your duty, sir. You better let someone more competent take over the marines. I’ve decided. You’re not in command here anymore.”
“This is mutiny!”
Marukka grinned broadly at his bluster. “Too fuckin’ right, sah!”
Ashnak straightened his shoulders slightly. He looked down from the podium at the crowded hall and tense faces, chewing on his unlit cigar. Two marines behind Marukka got to their feet and flanked her in support, starting to unsling M16s from their shoulders.
FOOM! FOOM!
Wood splintered.
Ashnak shot through the podium that concealed the drawn and cocked .44 Magnum pistol in his hand, shredding the black sweatshirt over Marukka’s heart and putting a greenish-brown-rimmed hole between the eyes of the orc marine with “FRAG THE OFFICERS!” on her helmet. The third marine hit the floor, M16 raised, and a loyal grunt corporal put five rounds into her from behind with an AK47.
“No one’s taking over here except me!”
The junior officers who had stood up sat down, attempting to achieve invisibility. Ashnak strode down from the platform, backhanding the two nearest and catapulting them across the hall. Chairs went flying. He reached Marukka’s body and booted the orange-haired orc over onto her back. The wound pumped green blood less strongly now, pooling on the floor. Her eyes were open, unseeing. Tissue from the exit wound spattered the orc marines behind her.
“What do you shit-for-brains dumb motherfuckers expect me to do?” Ashnak snarled. “Stand there and ask her questions while she shoots me? Siege or no siege, this coup is over before it’s started. I’m general of the orc marines and it’s going to stay that way. Is that clear?”
“SIR, YES SIR!”
Ashnak stomped back to the dais, lighting his cigar.
“Now. As I was saying. We find ourselves in a hostile situation, siege-wise…”
Ignoring the wall map behind him, he pointed his swagger stick at the table set up below the dais. Orc majors and captains abandoned their folding wooden chairs, kicking and biting to be in the front row around the war-table. Ashnak glared down at the tops of helmets and forage caps and coughed meaningfully. Orc heads lifted, tusks gleaming in heavy lower jaws, piggy eyes glinting. Reluctantly they shuffled back a few inches.