“There is some truth in what my corporal says,” Ashnak confirmed. “However, my strategy at the moment doesn’t involve fighting the High King and all his many, many allies. As I said, it involves peaceful trade.”
“But how?”
Ashnak eyed the two halflings. They did not seem anything like as convinced as he had imagined they would be at this point. He scowled.
“As to how,” Magda Brandiman said, “firstly, I am an accredited Southern Kingdoms duchess. Magda Brandiman can vanish, and Magdelene van Nassau return with no stain on her reputation. She could make the orcs and their general welcome in Graagryk…”
Ashnak beamed and nodded.
“…but, of course, that would still give the High King and Council great excuse for suspicion. So that won’t work.”
Ashnak’s heavy jaw dropped.
“But that was our plan!” he spluttered.
“That won’t work alone,” Magda emphasised. “However, I have the perfect answer. It will turn the orc marines into Graagryk’s trusted allies; and by that move, make them the Light and the High King’s allies too.”
“What it is, Your Grace?” Cornelius Scroop queried.
Simone Vanderghast said, “Your Grace, the city would welcome your return. How we would welcome it! Only I don’t understand what you can do about this political problem of orcs’ being unacceptable in the Southern Kingdoms…”
“I can make the orc marines respectable,” Magda Brandiman said.
She rested her diminutive chin on her interlinked fingers and met Ashnak’s bemused gaze. She smiled.
“I can make the general of the orc marines respectable,” the Duchess Magdelene said. “Ashnak, will you marry me?”
“No! Listen up: I’m telling you for the last time! I won’t do it!”
“Yes, you will.”
“It isn’t what we planned! It’s nothing like it!”
“I know.”
“Dark damn it, halfling, I am not going to marry you!”
“Yes, you are.”
“Fuck off and die!”
“If that’s what you want. But let me hear you tell me twice.”
“I’m not getting married! No way!”
“No industry. No arms trade.”
“I don’t care!”
“No Magda Brandiman.”
“So what!”
“You’ll do it. When you get to my age, you know these things.”
“And how old are you, exactly?”
“Let’s just say I don’t look as though I have two sons in their late forties, do I?”
“I won’t do it! I’m a marine, and I’m an orc; and when an orc marine says something, he means it, and I’m saying it now: we are not getting married!”
11
Four hundred miles to the south of the Demonfest Mountains, the Duchy of Graagryk lies on the flat lands bordering the southern coast of the Inland Sea. Snow perches pristine white on roofs and leafless trees, as it properly should, and does not clog the boots of the Graagryk halflings as they hurry towards the city’s great cathedral.
Chimneys belch smoke at the edges of the frozen salt flats—smoke that by magery is made to vanish even as the factories produce it. The warm winter sun shines down on a clean land. Even the poorest halfling housewife has the use of cleansing magery, and the very cobbles in the streets gleam, cleaned of slush.
Baroque horns ring out. Graagryk’s thronging citizens fall silent entering the great halfling cathedral—which by orc standards is a largish church. The pews being too small to take his bulk, Ashnak, general of the orc marines, remains standing.
“—but I must talk to you immediately after the ceremony!” Chancellor-Mage Cornelius Scroop protested. “The political situation is becoming urgent!”
Ashnak peered down at the flowing red tresses of the Chancellor-Mage of Graagryk, at last making out a pair of mournful halfling eyes regarding him from amongst swathes of haberdashery.
“See me later, stumpy,” the orc snarled, tugging the lapels of his brown formal marine uniform straight. For some reason the tunic collar seemed more than usually tight around his bull neck.
The holly decorations of Yule Solstice made the interior of the white cathedral bright with red and green. Candles burned in sconces. Outside the high, pointed windows the sky glowed a fierce winter blue.
“Ash-nak! Ash-nak! ASH-NAK!”
Orc marines, unmagicked snow crusting their boots, crowded the pews behind Ashnak. Uniformed, armed grunts sat up in the window embrasures, hung off candlestands, stood on the bases of pillars and the backs of pews, and sat hip to bony hip along the edge of the lectern. They chanted:
There were probably a lot fewer marines present than there were halfling citizens of Graagryk. It was just, Ashnak reflected, that orc marines seem to take up more room.
Halflings in aprons, carrying mundane brushes and buckets, scurried from nave to aisle and back, hopelessly scrubbing and wiping in the orcs’ wake. Ashnak resignedly lifted his combat boots, one at a time, as a Graagryk cleaner mopped under them. The nullity talisman around his leathery bull neck tingled. Breath fluttered under his breastbone.
“Urgency?” he queried.
The halfling chancellor waved his lace-cuffed hands. “The news is that companions-in-arms from the disbanded Dark and Light armies are ravaging the kingdoms from the south to the sea! They take towns and fortresses, are driven out again, take others; take good men for ransom and are paid, or kill their prisoners out of hand; it’s terrible!”
Ashnak raised beetling brows in surprise. “It is?”
Cornelius’s round face sharpened. “We have orders for arms flooding in from every kingdom for leagues around—contracts to be signed, they stipulate, only after this ceremony.”
“Civilians!” Ashnak showed his carious fangs. “Don’t worry. Your percentage is safe…”
Major Barashkukor trotted smartly down the aisle from the cathedral entrance. The small orc wore parade dress: black uniform brushed and belt buckle shining. His thin crest had been combed and watered flat to his misshapen skull, and he wore a new black Stetson.
“Yo, sir!” He saluted, taking off his mirrorshades. “She’s coming, sir!”
Ashnak glanced down at his own polished black boots, worried by their unorcishly pristine splendour. “The ring?”
“Sir, got it, sir! Here, sir!” Barashkukor patted the top pocket of his black tunic. His spindly, clawed fingers groped at the cloth. Suddenly panic-stricken, he dug his hand into the pocket and brought it out with a sigh of relief, clasped around a small gold ring, plain except for some script engraved around the inside.
“One size fits all, they said. Nice piece of goods, sir.”
“Should be. I had enough trouble to get hold of it.”
“Ash-nak! Ash-nak!”
The orc marines cheered, their voices echoing up into the low cathedral roof, and then abruptly fell silent. The organ sonorously blasted out a few bars of something Ashnak charitably recognised as the orc marine march. A Badgurlz marine added her saxophone to the cacophony. Ashnak turned his head, looking back down the aisle.
Magda stood in the doorway, silhouetted against bright snow and blue sky and the crowds in Graagryk’s main square. Her satin and white lace dress trailed in the trodden slush from the orc marines’ boots. A maid in a pink satin farthingale, her brown hair braided up on her head, picked up the train and walked down the aisle behind Magda.