Another explosion rocked the ground. Barashkukor clutched the female elf’s elbow. Her mouth hung open. There was a light in her eyes. Black ash and fragments of wood rained down across the snowbound fort.
“Have to ask you to move to the rear now, ma’am.” Barashkukor thumbed the RT. “This is Bravo to Command. Am going in now, sir.”
“Okay, marines, let’s rock and roll!”
The artillery barrage cut out. Orc voices bellowed commands. The noise of ladders sounded strangely loud as the squads went over the top, down the walls, and fanned out to cross the outer compound. Grenades cracked; heavy weapons bellowed. The earth shook.
Barashkukor sprinted behind his squad, clear across the outer compound, over the ruined walls and into the main enemy camp. Ahead of the forward squads, ahead of heavy weapons—
“Yee-hah!” Barashkukor fired the Desert Eagle pistol.
DUKKA-DUKKA-ker-FOOM!
“Bravo to Command, repeat Bravo to Command, we are encountering minimal resistance. We did it, sir! We’ve taken them completely by surprise! Move the troops up on my position; over.”
“Wilco, Bravo. Out.”
Cloud cleared. The dawn sun’s light swept across the siegeworks and the enemy camp.
Barashkukor lowered his pistol. He reholstered it.
The sun shone on long-dead campfires from which the cooking gear had been removed, abandoned tents with a few broken weapons scattered outside, and a vast pattern of circles of dead turf where panoplied tents had once stood. The beams shone on piles of horse dung, but no horses. Cartruts, but no baggage carts. Holes where flagpoles had been sited, but no Colours or Ensigns of the Light.
Barashkukor stared. He tipped the Stetson back on his head. One long ear drooped. Still staring, he used his radio to direct Varimnak’s armoured war-elephant to overfly the whole length of the Light’s camp.
“Nothing, man! No warriors. No surprise ambush. No traps or pits. Nothing!”
A stray shell from the creeping barrage ahead dropped short, fragments whistling past Barashkukor’s ears.
Barashkukor fumbled for the RT and screamed: “Abort attack! Bravo unit to Command, abort the attack, repeat, abort the attack! We have no hostiles. I repeat, we have no hostiles. Send out recon. Sir, they’ve gone, sir!”
The noise of suppressive and speculative fire died away.
“Command to Bravo.” Ashnak’s voice came loud and distorted over the channel. “What do you mean, you have no hostiles! It must be a trap!”
The rising sun shone full into the valley of the Nin-Edin pass. In its light Barashkukor looked back and saw the devastated fort, the swarms of orc marines going into cover and holding the outer bailey. He stared forward at the abandoned siegeworks and the completely deserted enemy camp.
“It’s not a trap. Come out and look for yourself, sir,” Barashkukor whimpered. “They’ve all gone away.”
10
Ashnak leaned his horny elbow on the side of his jeep, camouflage sleeve rolled up, bare orc-hide resting against metal biting cold in the morning frost.
“Someone must have yelled for help,” Ashnak switched the chewed roll of pipe-weed to the other side of his wide mouth, “and Amarynth Arselicker got orders to pull out. Elfshit! Just when we could have done with a fight to knock the new marines into shape.”
Since this was not wholly bravado, he was pleased to see his subordinate orc salute smartly and with every appearance of regret. Major Barashkukor stood beside the jeep, thumbs hooked under his belt, small booted feet planted wide apart. His Ray·Bans reflected Ashnak’s camouflage-creamed features.
“They must’ve moved out stealthily after midnight. Sorry, sir!”
“You will be,” General Ashnak promised. “And so will my reconnaissance teams.”
Ashnak sprang down from the jeep, boots crunching the trodden slush and black embers of the abandoned enemy camp. Squads of orc marines combed the slopes of Nin-Edin in disciplined order. He narrowed his eyes against the knife-wind and early sun.
East, the foothills ran down into empty country, the farmlands of Sarderis too far away to be properly seen. White frost covered the hills, white mist blurred the sunrise. Vultures wheeled in the high sky. Ashnak drew in breath cold enough to freeze a Northlands orc.
“Wonder how long a start they got?”
Barashkukor looked nervous. “There are still whole armies of Light out there, sir.”
A SUS marine scrambled up the slope towards Ashnak, halted, and snapped a bony salute. About to reprimand the orc for grinning at a superior officer, Ashnak concluded that he might be mistaken in this when it came to the Undead.
“What is it, marine?”
“Sir, report from Corporal Lugashaldim’s Special Services recon group. Amarynth’s main force is six hours away from us, and closing on Sarderis; armed and ready for battle with the rogue mercenary units down there. The SUS report we can’t catch them up, sir.”
Ashnak nodded morosely. The Undead orc marine continued:
“Sir, Corporal Lugashaldim also reports that the enemy baggage train is only two hours away, down the main Sarderis road. It’s moving very slowly. And it’s unguarded, except for one mage.”
This time there was no mistaking the orc marine’s grin, Undead or otherwise.
“The Light’s ‘rules of war,’ sir. Since the baggage train’s sacred, they’ve bothered to put only a couple of crossbowmen with it, at the van and the rear. We could intercept it in the Red Gullies, sir. What are your orders?”
“Tell Lugashaldim we’re on our way!” Ashnak slammed his fist into his palm. “Major Barashkukor, get your platoons together and move out to the Gullies. I’ll follow with mine!”
“Sir, yes sir!”
Galvanised into action, two platoons of orc marines loaded themselves into four-tracks and jeeps. Ashnak, beaming, swung himself up into a jeep, jammed shoulder to shoulder with Varimnak’s Badgurlz, their M16s and grenade-launchers jutting into the air. Sergeant Varimnak stood her booted feet down on the pedals, and the jeep roared away down the hill-slope, rocking and juddering.
“Go, marines!” the peroxide-haired orc bellowed, overtaking the assembling column of vehicles. Ashnak saw her hit a control on the dashboard. Loud music blared out into the snowy silent dawn.
“Marine, give me an assault weapon,” he demanded.
A hulking orc in woodland camouflage combats proudly handed over an XM18 grenade-launcher. “Eighteen rounds in five seconds, sir, four hundred metres range. Loaded with alternate smoke, flares, gas, frag, and anti-personnel shells.”
Ashnak checked the drum magazine. The weapon smelled beautifully of grease and metal and wax. “Okay, you marines, listen up! No need for a stealth approach. This is a baggage train, it moves at the speed of the slowest horse-and-cart, it isn’t going anywhere. Those pointy-eared mothers cut us up in Nin-Edin—now it’s our turn!”
“YAYYY ASHNAK!”
A short time later the jeep crested the hill above the Red Gullies. The road, almost past the foothills and into the lowlands, here split into a dozen narrow tracks between outcrops of red sandstone.
Wagons blocked all the narrow tracks.
Ashnak took it in at a glance: seventy or eighty heavy wagons weighed down with tents, chests, cooking gear, spare armour, cord, anvils, hammers, saws, bottles, benches, chairs and beds, candles, flagpoles, haybales—everything that heroic warriors need but cannot carry on their backs.