Razitshakra clawed her way up the tree and back onto her feet, muttering, “Yessir, that’s what I said, sir, isn’t it, sir?”
“You might defy gravity, but you won’t defy me!” He clapped the marine on the back as she attempted to adjust her rimless spectacles. His grip abruptly tightened. “Take cover! I hear more riders.”
His unit went to ground. The next few minutes spent at a low crawl brought Ashnak, alone, to where he could peer down off the wooded ridge at the crowded countryside of Men. The Demonfest Mountains loomed to the east. A whole squad of orcs would undoubtedly be intercepted. A single orc on his own, however…
A single orc, travelling alone, might sneak up into the foothills, double back north, make his way round the end of the mountain range, and vanish off into the Dark Lands of the East. Which, although conquered, were doubtless better for an orc’s health than being inside a mountain fort surrounded by the Light’s finest mages and warriors.
Ashnak crawled down onto the very inviting goat trail that would backtrack up into the mountains.
He bellied up to a hummock and slid over it.
“Going somewhere, were we, sir?”
The sharp whisper came from one of the Undead grunts surrounding Lugashaldim and Razitshakra. The female orc fixed a very chilly gaze on Ashnak. “Like you said, sir, we’d better make our best speed back to Nin-Edin.”
Ashnak fingered his brass-capped tusks. A war-band of wild orcs might easily be persuaded out of returning to the fortress. He momentarily wished for a war-band of wild orcs, not orcs with the glint of marine in their eyes.
Lugashaldim rasped, “Wouldn’t want to think Marukka had been right, sir, would we?”
A great orc is tough, but a dozen Undead orcs together are conceivably tougher.
When there is no other option, an orc keeps his promises.
“Of course we’re going back, soldier.” Ashnak beamed expansively. “I was just scouting out the best route. Okay, marines. Harch!”
In a countryside burned and ravaged by the Dark, but still occupied by uncountable Men, elves, and other hostile races, Ashnak’s Commandos sought desperate and elusive concealment on their way south.
The fifteenth day of the siege dawns cold and clear.
Work parties of Men and elves used picks to rapidly demolish the rubble of the outer walls of Nin-Edin. Winter light flooded the slope. Views of the mountain pass appeared where there had been only masonry. The smell of magic building up stung in the air, making orcs’ eyes and nostrils weep a thin mucus fluid.
“They’re going to come right over us!” Corporal Ugarit, a flak jacket tied on over his ceramic and steel armour, stared down at the devastated inner walls, and the forces of Light behind earth-banks and wooden barricades. “It’s going to be soon! I’m going to die!”
Barashkukor seized the skinny orc’s collar, dragged him down squat nostril to nostril, and spat into his face. “Be an orc, Ugarit! We’ll hold this fort to the last orc—the last enlisted orc, that is.”
“He’s right, man…” Sergeant Varimnak smoked a thin roll of pipe-weed, the slit pupils of her eyes shrunk to vertical lines. She stood behind Barashkukor, AK47 slung across her back, a ragged strip of black cloth bandaging her shaven skull. “Fighting Agaku, man! Call in the artillery! Call in an airstrike!”
“Will you listen?” The skinny orc corporal whimpered. “Every so often those guys down there stop waving flags and polishing their armour and realise they need only the simplest magic and we’re wiped out. They only have to stick that Amarynth motherfucker out in front for long enough, and they’re gonna come over these walls like a flash flood!”
And at midnight:
A close voice hissed out of the darkness, “Password Dagurashibanipal!”
“Adva—” The orc marine sentry, fear and relief searing his nerves, raised the muzzle of his SA80 assault rifle. His finger accidentally closed on the trigger.
A burst of automatic fire cut the darkness. The echo roared back from the keep walls. Muzzle flash strobed, outlining a figure hammered back by bullet impacts. It whirled and fell.
The orc marine sentry whimpered and took a hesitant step forward, looking down at the supine body.
“Dumbfuck!” The body sat up. It got to its feet. Corporal Lugashaldim glared at the hapless orc sentry.
“Sir, sorry, sir! Accidental discharge, sir!” The guard cringed.
“I’ll give you accidental discharge,” Lugashaldim snarled. The rounds had ripped his black combats to pieces and shot away most of his stomach and lower torso. He made a vain attempt to stuff his spilling intestines back inside his body cavity. They slid out.
“Shit!” Lugashaldim shoved handfuls of slick white tubes up under his ribs. They slid out again. Muttering, he grabbed his intestines between two gnarled hands, ripped them and the colon off short, and threw the entire mess of tubes over his shoulders. It hit the keep wall and slopped to the flagstones.
“You’re on a charge, marine! So’s your sentry partner, for being absent from duty.”
The second guard, who had just finished a roll of pipe-weed in the gate-house, looked out dreamily, remarked “Fuck, we’ve been sussed!” and vanished back inside.
“Any problems, Lugashaldim?” the orc general inquired, strolling out of the darkness beyond the broken walls with the remainder of the Undead marines.
“No, sir, General Ashnak, sir! None that these fuckwitted, shit-stupid excuses for marines won’t regret from now until their dying day—and after.” Lugashaldim bared long teeth in a rotting grin and clapped the guard on the shoulder. “You know what they say, soldier. Join the marines, and see the world—join the SUS, and see the next…”
A few moments later a sweating Barashkukor appeared out of the darkness. The orc major saluted his superior officer.
“The mission, sir?” he enquired anxiously. “Was it a success? Do we have the talismans, sir?”
Ashnak turned his heavy-jawed head back from surveying the ravaged fort. “Well,” he said, “not exactly…”
The morning came white with frost.
Will Brandiman rejoined his brother in the hills below Nin-Edin. He drew his grey-green concealing cloak back from the mail-shirt and helm that had made him a reasonable facsimile of the Light’s soldiers.
“Well?” Ned said.
“You tell me.” Will shrugged. “You’ve seen the elf. Go up to him and say, ‘We have to break siege and go into the fort because they’re holding our mother hostage’; and he’ll say, ‘Tough, war is hell, no dealings whatsoever with the forces of Darkness.’ Or am I wrong?”
Ned shook his head. “Not if I’m any judge of elves.”
Both halflings returned to their wagons, parked sufficiently far from the siege camp that the Light’s scouts had not yet discovered them—which, given the camp’s predilection for concentrating on Nin-Edin itself, amounted to about half a mile. Will looked back at the squat, broken fort in the pass.
“We don’t have long, Ned. I kept my eyes open going through the Light’s camp. If we don’t get into the fort today, there isn’t going to be a fort to get into.”
Ned Brandiman scratched through his greasy brown hair. “We could always set fire to the besiegers’ tents.”