“Illusions!” the orc sneered.
The Dark Lord cried, “I see into you! I know what you once most feared, living through night after night in the hierarchy of the Pits; inflicting and suffering abuse, proving your right to live and become adult. I know what hides, unacknowledged, in your memory; and from it I create soul pictures, pains more powerful than the severing of limbs. Ashnak, I touch your soul!”
The big orc’s body stiffened—ramrod-straight from his combat boots to the tips of his pointed ears. His eyes rolled up in their deep sockets and showed the whites. Stiff as a board, pivoting from the heels, the orc’s body tipped over backwards. His skull impacted on the floor with such force that two tiles cracked. As he lay there unconscious, it could be seen that the General of the Orc Marines had wet himself.
The nameless necromancer stepped carefully over the orc’s supine body on his way to pour himself another drink, and stepped back over the body on his return, pausing only to spit in the orc’s face.
“You will not defy Me more than once,” She promised. “Ashnak, you may wake.”
The orc groaned, sat up, opened his mouth, and shut it again. He wiped his face and rubbed the back of his skull, and at last got to his feet. Dusting his filthy fatigues down with his forage cap, he regarded the Lord of Evil with the air of one unfairly tricked.
“My warrior-orc Ashnak, do you like what I have showed you?”
Ashnak said blankly, “What?”
“You do not remember the terror created from your past?”
Ashnak’s leathery brows furrowed. He shook his head. “Negative, ma’am.”
“Amazing,” the Dark Lord commented. “Finesse is wasted on orcs. Next time I shall merely kill you. Now…”
Her voice, soft from that command-roughened throat, soaked into the summer afternoon air of Graagryk. Nothing stirred in the tower room while She spoke.
“…I have no wish for easy victories. I am weary of war. There are only so many new ways to shed blood. I could take the souls of those fools of the Light and make them Mine. But I am weary of sucking souls: the little races of this world are tedious to the heart. It pleases Me now to do things otherwise.”
Ashnak slurred an orcish curse under his breath, unadmitted shock chilling his ox-body. He raised his voice again to audibility. “Lord…If not armies…or soul-magic…then how will you conquer?”
Her hair like sunlight, Her metal robe hiding all darknesses within its folds, the ugly Man stands against the light. The splotched patchwork of Her skin blends Her into the dazzle. She smells of dead cities that breathe perfumed dust onto the world’s winds.
“This time,” the Dark Lord said, “I think it will please Me to win an election.”
Ashnak could not move, his muscles still shook and trembled. It took him all his strength of will to stay upright. He became aware of the nameless necromancer only as the black-haired Man strode forward to face the Dark Lord.
Simultaneously, both the orc general and the nameless necromancer demanded, “What’s an ‘election’?”
A ducal carriage rattled past the orc marine sentries and into the barracks compound, steel-shod wheels striking sparks from the cobbles under the archway.
As Lieutenant Lugashaldim of the Special Undead Services watched, Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, descended from the carriage in a flurry of aides, nursemaids, outriders, and guards. Her young children scurried about her feet, playing with a pack of wolfhounds twice their height, and tame parrots fluttered above her in scarlet and green. Magda snapped her fingers. Her chief lady-in-waiting, Safire, extended a parasol to protect the ducal head both from the late-afternoon sun, Lugashaldim imagined, and from the birds.
“You may let the children play here,” Magda announced to her entourage in a clear, carrying voice. She waved away the orc gate guards clattering across the cobbles towards her. “You! Lugashaldim! You may fetch me my Ashnak. Now.”
Behind the fortified walls that faced Graagryk city, sunlight slanted into the Orc Marine HQ and illuminated brick walls, machinery-cluttered sheds, gutted barracks, and deserted armoured vehicles. The off-duty orc marines sprawled on the grass of the compound, drinking Graagryk’s fine wines, roasting something of worrying dimensions on a spit, and fornicating energetically around the firepit and under the lime trees. Upon sighting an approaching Undead orc lieutenant they made a concerted effort to button uniforms and shuffle the worst of the debris out of sight.
“Ma’am.” Lugashaldim, sun shining through his mummified flesh and bones, looked down and saluted the female halfling. “I’m afraid the present whereabouts of General Ashnak are classified.”
The Duchess Magda stared down her halfling nose and replied in fluent marine. “I’m his wife, you dickhead!”
Her entourage snickered. The rotting orc marine shifted from combat boot to combat boot uneasily. “But, ma’am—”
“He is my ducal consort and I will speak with him now.”
The Undead officer blinked ragged eyelids over curdled eyeballs. The stripped bone of his skill gleamed, and he cast an elongated skeletal shadow on the grass. Magda’s nostrils flared.
“You may as well let the hounds off their leashes,” she remarked. “They need to relieve themselves, I think.”
Her servants obeyed. Five wolfhounds, two parrots, and the duchess’s children ran across the parade ground. Orc marines started to their feet, hauling automatic weapons out of the way of clutching hands and dogpiss. Childish shrieks of glee drowned out an orc sergeant’s order. A wolfhound stole the roast from the spit. Two marines pursued it as it dragged the meat off, snarling.
Lugashaldim wiped a parrot-dropping from his decaying uniform.
“I guess you can wait in his office, ma’am,” the lieutenant conceded weakly.
Calm amid the chaos of children, dogs, and orc marines trying to retrieve their belongings without being caught disposing of any intruders, Magda said, “I do not wish to wait at all. If I do, I shall wait right here.”
Lugashaldim gazed across the compound. Dormitories—long brick barracks that had stood just high enough to house halfling warriors—lay gutted. Marine ponchos had been fixed between their broken walls, and under these were the offal-strewn, refuse-ridden, rubble-buttressed lairs of siblings known as orc-nests. Brown, black, green, and albino limbs stirred frostily as the chaos spread, and he heard the familiar rumble of orc snores.
The Duchess Magda remarked loudly, “How unlike the home life of my own dear Ashnak!”
“Sorry, ma’am—” He paused as young orcs just out of the Pit shrieked and gibbered past Magda’s people, their orcish spawn-herd in close pursuit. Magda’s eyes followed their compact, long-armed bodies, pointed ears, and crimson-glaring eyes under beetling brows. The young orcs were herded back past the planks spiked with broken glass that covered the tops of the brick-lined Pits. Grunts, snuffles, screeches, and wails echoed up from the depths.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry. He didn’t notify us of his departure, destination, or time of return.”
The Duchess Magda swore with a fluency gained in the brothels of two dozen kingdoms. “Then find him! Search!”
The Undead orc stood with his skeletal shoulders hunched, trying not to tower over her. “Ma’am, we don’t know where to look—”
“Magda!” a voice bawled.
Ashnak strode in under the barracks archway, his forage cap tugged well down over his eyes and a pipe-weed cigar jutting from one corner of his tusked mouth. Both he and his uniform looked somewhat the worse for wear, although with orcs it is difficult to tell. He drop-kicked a couple of slow-moving marines out of his path, and acknowledged Lugashaldim’s salute. “Magda, my dear…”