Chancellor Scroop put down his knife and fork. He swallowed greenly. “Your firepower demonstrations earlier today were…interesting. As was the tour of Corporal Ugarit’s workshops. But…How could this arrangement possibly work? We couldn’t sell these arms to just anyone.”
Ashnak nodded to Magda.
“It’s necessary to sell surplus arms legitimately to fund manufacture.” Magda leaned her small, muscular arms on the tabletop. “I say legitimately, because—as we all know—the High King and his council are clamping down on anything that looks remotely dodgy. What the marines can do for Graagryk in that respect is simple. They can provide end-user certificates, certificates to show that we’ve sold our arms to a good, Light-fearing land that needs them to defend itself against the leftover Horde.”
Simone Vanderghast fingered her sword-hilt. “End-user certificates. I like it.”
Ashnak drank his beer down in one swallow, belched, and wiped his wide, lipless mouth.
“Lord Blond Wolf here, perhaps,” the orc rumbled, “comes from a small northern Light-loving kingdom which needs to defend itself against evil neighbours?”
Magda’s eyes danced. “They do have a troublesome border, yes.”
“Probably a poor kingdom,” Cornelius Scroop speculated. “Most of the northern ones are—a bit of mining, if the dwarves don’t get it; bit of forestry; nothing much for export.”
He paused.
“Be honoured to extend a loan, Lord Wolf.”
The northern barbarian picked up a dish, stuck his finger in it, licked it, and remarked, “Fish eggs.” He then fixed his ice-pale eyes on Ashnak.
“I’ll lend you frigging orcs my name, like the lady here explained to me, and that’s all you swiving sons of goats will get from me! I wouldn’t touch your arms with a shit-pole. Honest iron’s for me! Honour of the north!” He slurped a beer tankard dry. “Couldn’t afford ’em anyway. Ship ’em where the fuck you please, just not to us. Bugger our economy if you did. But for the right price you can use our name.”
“Ah…yes.” Cornelius Scroop blinked at Vanderghast.
The Badgurlz marines reached the end of a number and screeched into silence, dropping their instruments and ploughing through the startled dancers in a flying wedge aimed at the bar. Major Barashkukor left the podium and approached a corner table where Commissar Razitshakra sat, the peak of her cap pulled down, taking surreptitious notes.
“Razzi…”
The commissar turned her back. “Suspect little creep! Fraternising with civilians. Elvish civilians, at that.”
The major moped back towards the bandstand and the returning Badgurlz.
“Won’t speak to me since she came back from that commando mission,” he muttered. “Isn’t my fault I didn’t go on a commando mission. I’d like to go on a commando mission. Mistress del Verro knows how to appreciate a soldier, even if she is a civilian…”
A light came into the small orc’s eyes, and he marched out onto the dance floor and tapped Perdita del Verro’s orc partner on the back.
Sergeant Varimnak glanced over her shoulder. She freed one hand and pushed her talons through her cropped white crest in a soldierly manner. “Just doing my bit to cement interspecies relations, sir.”
Perdita, standing head and shoulders taller than her partner’s muscular bulk, rested in the orc’s arms, dancing with her golden eyes half shut.
“May I have the—erm—the pleasure of this dance?” Barashkukor asked the elf.
She ignored him.
Varimnak looked down lazily. “Sir—fuck off, sir.”
Left standing, the major plodded dispiritedly towards the bar. The Badgurlz band, with a certain amount of schadenfreude, began to play “He Was Her Orc, but She Done Him Wrong.”
“General.” Cornelius Scroop recalled Ashnak’s attention. “This has a promise of being profitable, true—you orcs will be developing and making arms, ostensibly for your own defence and for the defence of certain minor kingdoms, while being funded by us and using our industries.”
Ashnak nodded. “We’ll make arms for any mercenary band, enemy country, or overseas force who’ll pay. They’ll have to hire marine instructors or the weapons will remain deactivated. The price of Dagurashibanipal, gentlemen, the moral of which is: never unnecessarily kill a dragon; they have graveyard tempers.”
“But,” Scroop went on doggedly, “you’re an orc.”
Commissar Razitshakra shouldered past the long table. Ashnak overheard her spit, “Fraternising with civilians!” as Sergeant Varimnak left the dance floor, the elf journalist on her arm.
The Badgurlz sergeant stopped, grinned, polished the studs on her black leathers, and remarked, “Hey, man! I hear some of us have done more than fraternise…”
Varimnak’s gaze deliberately shifted to the band podium.
Commissar Razitshakra stomped off.
Magda Brandiman slid to the floor in a flurry of silk. “You’ll have to excuse me, sirs. Powder my nose.”
Ashnak grunted an absentminded acknowledgement. He prodded his disappointingly immobile meal and glared at Cornelius Scroop and Simone Vanderghast. “Of course I’m an orc!”
Tech-Corporal Ugarit stared across the dance floor. “The tuba’s a musical instrument, isn’t it, General?”
“What? Yes, corporal. It is. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that Major Barashkukor appears to be wearing one.” Ugarit pointed. “You can see his boots sticking out of the bell end.”
Ashnak’s eyebrow lifted as he watched Commissar Razitshakra stalk back across the dance floor with a highly satisfied expression.
“Orcish high spirits. Victory celebrations,” he said confidently to the two influential halflings. “Now, as we were saying…”
Some minutes later, Magda Brandiman emerged back into the main hall. She tapped an orc’s shoulder as he leaned morosely on the bar.
Barashkukor leaped six inches into the air and regarded the female halfling with wild eyes. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!”
“Woman-trouble, soldier?”
The battered orc major sighed. His shoulders relaxed. “Sure thing, ma’am—I mean, Your Grace.”
“News gets around.” Magda gathered her silk petticoats and turned, regarding the dance floor and the oblivious great orc at the conference table. The corner of her mouth twitched up.
The female halfling proffered her arm.
Barashkukor glanced to either side, then over his shoulder, and finally back at Magdelene van Nassau. He pressed one spindly finger to his chest. “Me, ma’am?”
“A little jealousy,” Magda Brandiman said, “never hurt anyone.”
Barashkukor tugged his tunic straight, stuck his small snout in the air, gripped Magda’s hand and waist, and waltzed off past a startled orc commissar and elf journalist. The Badgurlz band played “It Takes Three to Tango.”
When Magda returned, the great orc was tapping his talons on the tablecloth.
“But you’re an orc!” Chancellor Scroop wailed, in the tones of a halfling seeing an opportunity for profit vanishing. “No one will ever trust an orc!”
Simone Vanderghast agreed. “The High King would have an army in Graagryk in days!”
Corporal Ugarit chuckled—a thin, high sound. “Let ’em send an army! We’re not afraid of magic now, not even southern magic, no we’re not. Let ’em come, I’ll have ’em, I’ll take ’em all—”
Ashnak lifted his fist and brought it down on the top of Ugarit’s head. The kevlar helmet cracked. Ugarit beamed daffily, fell off his chair, rolled over on the floorboards, and began to snore.