“Ssssir…”
“Lieutenant Lugashaldim.” Ashnak ignored the salute and seized his Undead officer by the front of his rotting Special Forces pullover. “We get a visitor you can’t handle, so you haul me out of the goddamn Orcball finals to deal with it—your ass is grass, soldier!”
It is always tempting to reprimand the Special Undead Services marines for insolence.
“Sssir, the SUS can’t act against him; we need you here!”
Ashnak dropped Lugashaldim, hitched up his webbing, which strained to encompass his huge orc’s body, and drew his sidearm. The Desert Eagle pistol all but vanished in his gnarled hand. He snapped his talons at the three M16-carrying marines. “That door, forcible entry, now.”
The first marine rapidly crossed to the far side of the inner office door. His partner flattened herself against the wall on the near side, weapon raised. At a nod from the other two marines, the first orc kicked the door open, the third charged in, M16 aimed, and his hoarse voice bawled, “Freeze, motherfucker!”
Ashnak, still holding the pistol, shouldered his way into the inner office. The hot Graagryk sun shone in on wall-maps, partly disassembled weapons, manuals and textbooks of strategy, map-tables, field-telephones, a heavy typewriter, and the vast stone desk transported down (with no little difficulty) over the four hundred miles of terrain called the Spine that lies between the Nin-Edin Marine Base in the Demonfest Mountains and Graagryk.
A figure sat behind the desk.
“Shall I blow the mother away, sir?” The orc marine who had been acting as first doorman raised the M16 to his shoulder.
The temperature in the room plummeted. It grew so cold that the moisture covering Ashnak’s eyeballs froze. He rumbled a deep chuckle down in his chest, threw one camouflage-covered leg up on the corner of his own desk, sat, took out a thick pipe-weed cigar, and shoved it in the corner of his tusked mouth.
“Out!” he growled. “Lugashaldim, you too. Stay on guard outside. Move it, fuckheads!”
“Sir, yes sir!”
The clatter of orc marine boots was punctuated by the slam of the office door. Ashnak shifted his huge bulk to a more comfortable position, struck his talon against the stone desk to create a spark, and sucked deeply on the glowing cigar.
Rime-frost dripped from window-ledges, the edge of the desk, and the chair in which the seated figure sprawled. Ashnak slitted his long eyes against the window’s sunlight.
“We were at the Last Battle,” he growled. “Where the fuck were you?”
The nameless necromancer laughed.
He lounged in the carved chair, a tall Man with black hair fastened in a silver ring at the nape of his neck. Through the sash of his long robe was stuck a flute, the brown colour of old bone, about the length of a halfling’s thigh. The nameless necromancer fanned himself languidly with a war-fan, the struts of which had the sheen of dragonbone, and the folds the suspicious fineness of tanned Man skin.
“My creature grows insolent.” His voice set up echoes in the bones of Ashnak’s skull, and his green-eyed gaze bored into the orc’s eyes. “My creature will be punished, unless he submits and pays me the proper respect.”
His patchwork robe of fine multicoloured leather was sewn with silver thread. The shapes of the patches were not, to anyone with a field-knowledge of anatomy, reassuring.
Ashnak drew deep on his pipe-weed and blew a plume of smoke towards the nameless necromancer. With his free hand he thumbed back the hammer of the Desert Eagle pistol.
“Respect my ass!”
The nameless necromancer’s aquiline features tautened. A red spark burned deep in his black pupils. “You will feel, slave, the wrath of the necromancer. Is that your wish?”
Ashnak bared his brass-capped fangs. “Whaddaya want me to do, bang my head on the floor and beg for mercy? Things have changed around here.”
It became obvious that, wherever the nameless necromancer had spent the twelve months since the Last Battle, it had not been far enough away that rumours of the orc marines had not reached him. His chin and his fine-featured face lifted as he brayed a laugh.
“Oh, very good. Very good! You must forgive me if I attempt to put our relationship back on its old footing. But I think very fondly of old times. Don’t you?”
“Can’t say as how I do,” Ashnak rumbled. He switched the cigar to the other corner of his heavy-jawed mouth. “Dammit, you deserted the orc marines at the Last Battle!”
“But my sister The Named did not ride against you.”
“Thought you’d have robes made out of grey-and-white skin if you ever turned up again—maybe with yellow hair fringes. The Named never stood much chance against you.” Ashnak kept the pistol’s muzzle steadily on the nameless’s chest.
“You may spare yourself the trouble, Captain—and the ammunition.” The temperature in the office continued to drop. Sun glinted off icicles hanging from the cupboards and from Ashnak’s boots. From the anteroom came the ululating howl of an Undead orc marine officer in pain.
Across Graagryk, dogs began to wail. The noonday brilliance dimmed, and the smell of fresh frost haunted the streets. The stench of an opened charnel house, sour-sweet and dizzying, crept under the doors of halfling houses, darkness muddying the sun as far away as the arena, where the Duchess Magda looked up at the sky and shivered. Inside the barracks the orc marines stopped their various tasks and stood, ears pricked, heavy jaws hanging open, the seductive flute notes of an old slavery filling their ears.
Ashnak shook his heavy head and lumbered to his feet, boots apart, both hands gripping the pistol. The marine-issue dogtag talisman on its chain around his bull neck thrummed with its nullification of sorcery. “Fuck you, man! You’re outta here. You’re history!”
“So it is true.” Abruptly, the level of magic in the room increased. The nameless necromancer added smoothly, “Now we shall be a great presence, the nucleus of a new Horde of Darkness. My creature Ashnak, little orc, little captain; you have been a good steward in my absence. Now—before I snap that silly talisman like a sugar-stick—bow down and make your submission to me!”
FOOM!
Ashnak’s knees creaked. He caught himself with one hand against the desk. The Desert Eagle had bucked as it fired, and a shower of wood and plaster sprayed out of the wall behind the nameless necromancer’s head, missing the target by a yard.
“It’s like this.” Ashnak’s bandy legs shook. He kept a strong grip on the edge of the stone desk. “My orc marines are running the world’s number one arms dealing and marine training business. You make one move against us, and all the kingdoms from the Northern Waste to the Antarctic Icelands will land on your neck, and how do you like that, you lich-humping, skinny little fuck?”
The sun dimmed. The clamminess of long-buried flesh crept across Ashnak’s leathery hide. The nullity talisman whined. He sighted the pistol again, grip steady.
The room thawed.
“Consider yourself lucky,” the nameless necromancer purred, “that I have a sense of humour.”
The slender Man closed his war-fan and thrust it through his sash, reaching up to free his waist-length, fine black hair, smooth it, and then clasp it again in its silver ring. The summer sun warmed the office. Only the scent of old death remained from the power of moments ago.