“Plenty of time for a first drop.” Dakashnit’s voice came crackling over the headset. The uniformed orc gave him a gnarled thumbs-up and grinned toothily from under her mirror-visored flying helmet. “Don’t know how elves and parachutes will get along, L.t. You may not all make it. But hey, there’s always dropouts from every course…”
“You don’t like elves, do you, orc—I mean, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“Me?” The orc grinned and shrugged, massive shoulders rising almost to her pricked ears. “Man, I just love elf! You can’t beat roast and basted elf-haunch. Unless it’s breast-of-elf with chile peppers.”
Gilmuriel stared at the slavering creature, appalled. “This is impossible! Elves cannot serve with orcs! I shall inform the Lord of the Forest Elves of my resignation this very night!”
A fluting chorus of support came from the main body of the helicopter.
Dakashnit’s voice came back over the RT: “Fine by me. Let’s just say I’ve seen better marines than you lot, L.t.”
A third voice crackled in the headset, faint and breaking up. Gilmuriel frowned. The orc pilot fiddled with the receiver. Suddenly Dakashnit’s arm reached over his shoulder and tuned the signal in.
“—to any unit! Sergeant Moondream to any unit! We are taking hostile fire in Sector Seven Bravo, repeat, Sector Seven Bravo. This is not an exercise! We are coming under hostile fire, targets not visible. Sergeant Moondream to any unit—”
“Signal’s breaking up.” Dakashnit tried unsuccessfully for several moments. “Pilot, contact base! Tell them we’re altering course for Seven Bravo—if that’s all right with you, sir.”
She shoved the mirrored sunvisor up. Her deep-set piggy eyes glinted in a way that disturbed Gilmuriel. “I guess your Forest-King wouldn’t need trained troops if he wasn’t expecting battle, huh?”
“Well, I…Sergeant, perhaps we shouldn’t…”
“Who else is there, man? L.t., ask yourself how I feel about going into combat with this lot? We’re talking last-ditch emergency here!”
The lieutenant looked over his shoulder into the body of the steam helicopter and surveyed the rows of reluctant uniformed elves. Pointed ears darkened with camouflage cream, long-fingered musical hands stained with the green of jungle plants, slender bodies web-belted into uniforms that hung on them like sacks…Their ascetic, high-boned faces stared back at him sullenly.
“On the whole,” Gilmuriel agreed, “I’d rather be singing.”
In Graagryk, in the fortress of Graagryk’s ancient nobility, the stonework shows old. Unicorn tapestries cover the rough walls. Bear-pelts from the fabulous Antarctic Icelands are flung down on the flagstones. A fire burns in the great hearth, despite the summer, to take the edge off the room’s chill.
Ashnak strode across to the fireplace and stood, bowed legs planted widely apart, and pissed into the flames. He sighed with pleasure and re-buttoned his trousers; web-belt and bandoliers of 7.62-calibre ammunition shifting on his brawny frame.
“Anyone can see why you need the authority of a Dark Lord.” The big orc clasped his taloned hands behind him. “But the Dark Lord died at Samhain, at the Fields of Destruction, and some impersonator won’t fool anyone.”
The nameless necromancer spat, “You are the fool!”
Ashnak’s hairy nostrils flared. No corpse-stink here; the nameless necromancer muted his power—one could only suppose, out of assumed respect.
“The orc is here,” the black-haired Man announced, not to Ashnak, his skin robes whipping about his ankles as he strode towards the great arched window. Ashnak had not noticed the figure seated there, against the light, until now.
“So that’s it!” Ashnak guffawed. He planted huge fists on his hips, threw his tusked jaw up, and bellowed orcish laughter. “That’s what you did with her!”
He prowled closer, outside combat boots making no noise on the flagstones.
A female Man sat on the window seat, head bowed, the light shining on her sleek, bobbed yellow hair. The hands that rested in her lap were smooth, their skin patched black, grey, and fish-belly white. She was not wearing the full plate-armour of her last encounter with him. A dress forged from silver links so fine they ran like water clung to her form, shimmering with black light at every breath lifting her breasts.
“Lost out,” Ashnak commented. “Well, lady, that’s what you get for having a bastard like the nameless for your brother.”
Her head bowed. The window light illuminated her face. The lashes of her long eyes (that tilted up from the outer corners) rested on her piebald cheeks. Small tusks drew her lips up and apart, so that a thin thread of saliva ran down from the exposed corner of her mouth, across her pugnacious jaw.
Ashnak had always thought her orcishly handsome for one of the Man race.
“So you’ve destroyed The Named’s mind. So what? She still isn’t—” Turning his head to speak to the nameless, reaching one talon out to lift the female’s chin, Ashnak froze.
The ugly Man rose to her feet with a grace The Named had never possessed. Light sparked from her metal-mesh robe that chimed with the soft resonance of bells. A heavy perfume moved with her as she moved—throat-filling, musky, and ancient. She lifted her head.
Her eyes were without iris, pupil, or white. As her lashes lifted, her eye-sockets showed featureless orange. And even in full sunlight, they glowed perceptibly.
“Orc…”
A cloud lifted from Ashnak’s mind. Previously unnoticed figures of halfling servants in lace and linen became apparent to him, bringing choice ducal food and drink from the fortress’s cellars, their manner that of sleepwalkers. Guards drowsed with their halberds at attention. Graagyrk’s fortress dreamed a daymare, not even able to be restless in its sleep; and the city on the Island Sea, oblivious to the presence which cloaked Itself in their midst, continued with the commerce of a normal life.
The orc’s hide shivered, as if he had looked down to find himself standing on a pressure mine. “Dark Lord?”
“Yes.” She reached out and grasped his heavily muscled arm. Her touch made his skin wrinkle like rotten fruit.
The dogtag talisman about his neck burned to a degree that gave an orc pain, and then, with a high note, shattered.
“I am calling you to account for your life.” She paused. “After the defeat of Samhain, none of My Horde Commanders should remain living. But you do. What is your excuse, little orc?”
Ashnak, looking up from under his beetling brows, met that blind, all-seeing gaze.
The nameless necromancer said, “It pains me to admit it, but it was something more useful than cowardice.” Helping himself from a flagon of yellow wine at the table, he downed one tiny cup and then a second. “Great Lord of the Nightmare Dark.”
Ashnak had not previously witnessed the nameless necromancer afraid.
“Lord!” the big orc cried, suddenly falling to his knees on the flagstones before Her. Ashnak threw himself forward, arms outstretched, and banged his forehead on the stone.
“Lord, You live! Darkness be praised!”
A naked foot planted itself on his exposed neck. He controlled a shudder of relief and continued:
“Dread Lord, we nearly won the Samhain Battle for You—if I’d had support from the Horde Mages we could have turned the tide of the war. The orc marines are shit-hot! And we’re Your loyal servants. Servants such as no Dark Lord ever had before.”
“That,” Her contralto voice remarked, “I can well believe.”