Ashnak got to his feet.
“Right, marines! In the absence of Sergeant Major Guzrak—I’m coming down to take over the team!”
The orc marines cheered. The halflings in the stands cheered. Simone Vanderghast scowled.
“Husband and Consort,” a new voice said.
Ashnak hitched up the urban camouflage trousers that he wore tucked into laced high-ankle boots. He removed the peaked cap jammed between his ears, revealing the tribal scarring of the fighting Agaku and assorted marine tattoos.
“Magda!”
Ashnak whooped, slipped his hand between the female halfling’s legs, and lifted her up bodily in a whirl of black leather skirts. The city’s dignitaries tutted. He took her chin in his hand and planted a wet kiss squarely on her mouth. Her tongue probed his, darting.
“I’ve just arrived back from the arms factories.” Magdelene van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, seated herself, rearranged the flounces and layers of a skin-tight and full-length leather gown. Her hand dropped into the lap of Ashnak’s combat trousers, groping and squeezing. As the assembled councillors averted their gazes, her hand moved in thieves’ fingerspeech.
Ashnak, his mind at first on other things, deciphered:
—Urgent news! I must not speak of it in public. Even this finger-talk may be over-read!
“With you in a moment, my love!” Ashnak vaulted over the front of the box and dropped down to the field, loping across towards the scrum of bikes, ponies, halflings, and marines.
Magda described orcish sexual failings under her breath in fifteen languages. She snapped her fingers for her maid Safire to fan her in the summer heat; clapped formally, applauding the game; and addressed Cornelius Scroop.
“Our sales force abroad are doing extremely well… I rode back with the treasurer. He reports many interesting tidbits—the price of saltpetre in Shazmanar; rumours from further up the coast that the Kraken is being a danger to commercial shipping; Queen Shula’s lovers…But there, I mustn’t bore you with gossip. COME ON, YOU MOTHERFUCKER ORCS!”
Down on the field, Ashnak bestrode a Harley Davidson with a line of stickers on the engine casing, the most recent being a Dark Elf’s head with a line diagonally through it. He gunned the motor. The stuttering concussion beat at his ears. In the stands, tiers of halfling workers rose to their feet, ten thousand mouths showing like wide O’s.
“That halfling,” Ashnak pointed at the fastest rider, a stout, curly-haired fellow almost four feet tall. “Termination with extreme prejudice!”
“Yessir!” The orc corporal gunned her Harley, unslung a mace off her back, skidded in a circle that brought her speeding up behind the pony and rider, and swung the weapon.
The riderless pony galloped off the field.
The corporal tripped a second rider off his mount and wielded her mace in one hand and a warhammer in the other, pounding the remains of both into the turf.
“Bit excessive, Corporal.” Ashnak, motor idling, glanced down at what was left.
“Yeah, well…” The grunt grinned. “You know how it is at this time of the moon, sir.”
The squad of orc bikers formed up into an extended line, Ashnak at the centre, and roared down the field. Five of the ponies reared and ran away with their riders. The baffling leader, on foot, crimson coat stained with dust and blood, waved his polo mallet furiously.
“One is not going to be beaten by a miserable pack of greenies!”
An anonymous voice from the stands called, “‘Oo you kiddin’, guvner?”
The biker line hit.
“YO THE MARINES!”
Ashnak squelched the orc’s severed head down into the opposing team’s bucket. The halflings in the stands leaped to their feet, screaming applause. On Magda’s right, the halfling mother held her child up for a better view of the field, spittle flying from her mouth as she howled, “Are they marines?”
The halfling tot lisped, “They are mawines, Mama!”
Plumed hats soared up into the sunny air. Drums beat. The disposal teams wheeled their carts and shovels onto the field as the Badgurlz cheerleaders changed the scoreboards to the final 1-Nil result.
The surviving grunts drew themselves up and saluted in unison as Ashnak ambled back to the ducal box. Magda leaned down and gave him her hand to kiss.
“I need to speak with you!” she hissed.
The orc licked the sweat from her palm. He reached up and pocketed Vanderghast’s purse. “Sure thing…”
“Ahem!” A large marine trotted up to the duchess’s box, coughing discreetly for an orc. She wore green DPM camouflage fatigues, her crest was shaved down to the regulation quarter-inch, and her boots gleamed. Magda deduced garrison rather than field troops.
“Sir, excuse me, sir! Message from the barracks. They need you back there immediately, sir.”
Ashnak wiped sputum from the thigh of his urban combat trousers. “I’m busy! Tell Lugashaldim to handle it himself. Or I’ll rip your head off and you can carry that back to him for an answer!”
“Sir, yes sir!” Her leathery brow shone in the Southern Kingdoms’ heat, green skin pearled with sweat. “Sorry, sir, no, sir. Need you, sir.”
Ashnak kissed Magda’s hand. “You’ll have to excuse me, my little one. Present the Orcball League cup and make the relevant posthumous awards.”
“Hurry back, honey-cake!” Magda blew him a kiss. Her waving fingers moved in the signs for:
—Damn it, marine, I need to talk to you now!
Outside Graagryk Stadium, Ashnak glowered at his marine corporal. The orc saluted several times in succession and looked ready to continue it indefinitely. Ashnak picked the large orc up by her webbing and threw her headfirst against the stadium wall. The masonry held.
“Pull yourself together!” he snarled.
The corporal staggered upright, weaving. She made as if to salute again and thought better of it. “Confidential message for the general from Lieutenant Lugashaldim, sir. Please to report, the general has a visitor waiting for him back at the barracks.”
At that same hour, four thousand miles to the southwest of Graagryk and the Inland Sea, on the far side of all the Southern Kingdoms’ vast civilisation, and beyond the Deserts of Endless Sand, an orc marine mounted a podium in the main square of Gyzrathrani.
Two marines flanked him: hulking granite-skinned orcs stripped down to brown and ochre desert camouflage fatigue trousers, belt-magazines of .50-calibre ammunition draped across their brawny chests. The equatorial sun of Gyzrathrani beat down on their kevlar helmets and M16s.
Between them, standing some three feet six inches tall, the orc with spindly ears crammed down under a black Stetson tugged on his black leather gloves, flicked the last grain of desert sand from his dress-issue black combats, and adjusted a pair of mirrorshade Ray·Bans more firmly on his small snout.
He stepped up onto an ammunition crate placed on top of the podium.
“Gentlemen: good morning!”
He tapped the stand-microphone mounted on the podium with one neatly trimmed talon. The microphone squealed. The sound echoed around the palm trees, honey-glazed bricks, and beehive-buildings of Gyzrathrani. Several of the assembled warlords—Mannish warriors with plumed headdresses and long robes—drew back, their tasseled spears raised, until one called, “It’s only magic!” and another added, “And not strong magic, neither!”
From slit windows in the tall beehive-shaped buildings, the eyes of Gyzrathrani’s sequestered male Men watched. Distant giggles were just audible.