“You can’t keep a bad orc down.”
The orc duke surveyed the halfling city of Graagryk and looked up at Magda van Nassau. He belched and grinned.
“We may have lost the Last Battle—but we definitely won the war!”
BOOK 3
War Crimes
PROLOGUE
The American marine walked through the open door into the bar of the Goat and Compasses, ducking his head to enter.
Amy, behind the bar, registered him first as a shadow against the light. She put on her professional smile. “What can I get you?”
“Whiskey. Please.”
An American accent, with a slight Middle European edge. Thirty, maybe thirty-five, carrying himself with a tensile spring in his step. Amy read the brown identification tapes sewn above the breast pockets of the crisp brown-and-ochre camouflage jacket: STRYKER, one read, and the other, U.S. MARINES.
Conscious of the stir among the pub’s regular clientele, she had time to study the sturdy American, register camouflage colours made recognisable by weeks of TV Gulf War news broadcasts, and then the darts match in the snug broke up, and one of the older men from up on the housing estate said, “What are you having, mate? Bloody good job you did out there. That’s what I say. Bleedin’ good job. C’mon, what’re you having?”
The American marine rested his elbows on the polished bar. Under a forage cap his blond hair, shaved down almost to the scalp, gleamed under the pub lights.
“Whiskey,” he repeated quietly.
“Good for you, mate. Amy!”
“I’m here.” She poured a measure, watching the marine drink while she served others. There were lines about his eyes, as if he had spent time squinting into Arabian sunlight. She recalled news videos of similar men loaded with seventy-pound packs, piling out into rocky wastes blasted by aircraft and sown with mines. You could not tell, under the camouflage jacket, if his heavy arms and shoulders were tanned, but she thought they might be. She tried to make more eye contact.
“So what was it like out there, mate?” an old man persisted. “I saw it on the telly. Kill any wogs, did you?”
The American drank off half the whiskey. He leaned on the bar, in a position from which he could see both the public and the saloon bar door. Amy waited, almost holding her breath.
The brief roar of Tornado fighter jets flying back to RAF Chicksands vibrated through the building. The marine did not flinch. The regulars were turning back to their conversations, or watching the TV above the bar; the younger lads were playing the video machines, and Amy, flustered, wiped her hands on the bar-cloth. “Sorry about that. Sorry.”
The American raised his eyes from his glass.
“No harm, ma’am.” The quiet, accented voice did not alter.
Outside the lounge bar window, Darren—somewhere between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, wearing engineer boots, civilian copies of military-issue combat trousers, and a ripped Megadeth T-shirt—took out his black-bladed, serrated, guaranteed SAS Commando (style) knife and scored long lines on the bodywork of the parked U.S. Army military jeep. He pressed the knife’s point into the valves, deflating the tyres, and slashed at the rubber.
“You’re fucked!” The older youth, Mark, wiped his acne-ridden upper lip. His words slurred. He leaned too close over Darren and his breath was hot and beery. “You’re fuckin’ fucked! When he comes out.” He made the motions and noises of cocking a bolt-action rifle. “Kchaa!”
“I’m not bloody scared of him!” Darren wiped his streaming nose. He cast wary glances at the saloon bar door.
Two crowded, rusty vehicles swung into the car park in a skirl of gravel, shouts, and thrown beer cans. Mark elbowed him.
“Yes! Mike and Billy’re back!”
The American marine stepped out of the pub at that moment. Darren took him in from combat boots to the width of his shoulders. The man’s pale eyes flicked over him, registering his presence but not giving it any importance.
“Fucking squaddie!” Darren grunted.
Mark leaned on Darren and raised his voice belligerently. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Amy, collecting beer glasses from the pub garden’s tables, had paused to let her eyes travel across the countryside visible from the small village. There, under rolling English downs, a radio-farm marking the presence of a NATO bunker. There, across farmland and towards the much-patrolled North Sea, the white spheres of golfball-transmitters…
She spun around as brakes squealed in the car park, followed by the hollow bang! of crunched metal. She ran to the wall, aware of drinkers looking out of the open windows and coming to the pub door.
A large Ford Escort slewed caterwise across the car park, its crumpled hood buried against the U.S. Army jeep. Another car blocked the entrance. Ten or twelve youths that Amy recognised from the housing estate piled out of the cars and stood in a spread-out line between the crashed vehicle and the pub door, blocking the American’s path to the jeep.
“’Ere, you, you hit my fucking car!” Aggressive, daring a denial of the blatant lie, a tall and heavy-shouldered young man faced off against the American. “There I was an’ you ran right into me. S’right. What you going to do about it?”
The marine said levelly, with that slightly Germanic accent, “Drive away.”
“No, you bloody ain’t, my son. No fuckin’ way!”
Six of the young men began banging their fists and the flats of their hands on the jeep, laughing, rocking it on its wheelbase. Amy snapped her fingers at the assistant barman peering through the pub window and mouthed, Phone. Police. The barman nodded and vanished.
Caught without being able to cross the car park and get back into the pub, Amy stood and watched as the large American soldier came to a halt. He surveyed the shouting, raucous young men with a weary acceptance.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he stated.
The jeep failed to turn over. The dark-haired youth she vaguely recognised as Darren bawled, “Bleeding camel shaggers. Think you’re so bloody hot, don’t you? Well, come on, then. Do something. Unless you’re chicken!”
The marine’s eyes fixed on the middle distance, a stare that was not cold or angry or anything very much. Amy felt her stomach twist, abruptly afraid, not for this calm man, but for the half-drunk, violent children facing him. The American had moved with an economic grace, no energy wasted; and now he merely stood, nothing to prove, waiting until their voices died away.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d get out of here before the cops arrive.”
“Chicken! Faggot!” The dark-haired youth jabbed his middle finger in the air. “Fuck you, asshole!”
Amy twisted the bar-cloth between her suddenly cold hands. She stepped towards them, whispering, “Stop,” just as the gang of youths shouldered forward together. The American’s feet moved. His eyes widened.
Without any warning, the earth turned suddenly sideways.
Behind the American the air curdled and opened.
Amy fell and barked her knuckles against the car park wall. Her fingernails broke as she dug her fingers into the brickwork, grinding her heels into the dirt to stop herself from skidding across the car park towards the sprawling youths and the American. The earth swivelled up and sideways, so that it seemed she hung against the gravel, pulled towards the vast dark hole in the air that opened near the main door of the Goat and Compasses.