“Bugging out, General!”
The muzzle flash ignited the spilled fuel.
Graagryk’s military airfield sweated under midsummer sun.
Ashnak flattened his peaked ears against the blast of the cold-drake’s wings as the beast took off, heading back south at a considerable rate.
“Working for the Dark Lord again?” Behind her round wire-rimmed spectacles, the newly arrived Commissar Razitshakra narrowed her eyes. “But, sir—are you certain He’s ideologically sound? After all, He’s a civilian.”
The orc general made no reply to this impertinence. City living can make an orc soft. Marine Commissar Razitshakra began to eye the married Duke Ashnak with suspicion as he examined closely the fragment of black substance enclosed in a plastic envelope that she handed to him.
“I wonder, sir,” she ventured, “if that has anything to do with what the late Major Barashkukor reported?”
Without looking up, Ashnak absently drew back his fist and drove it forward.
The orc commissar picked herself up off the hard earth and wiped a trickle of green from her jaw. She spoke approvingly, if somewhat indistinctly. “Good to see you’re still a marine, General Ashnak!”
“That’s ‘Field Marshal Ashnak’ to you,” Ashnak snarled.
The heavy whup-whup of a Chinook sounded. The big orc looked up as the troop-carrier touched down. Beyond the airfield the candy-bright colours of Graagryk city gleamed, scoured clean by magery, with never a plume of smoke from the factories lining the Inland Sea coast. Three APCs also approached, crossing the field.
A Hind touched down fifty yards away, rotors whipping over its two stubby wings, and rocket and gun-pods.
Ashnak thumbed the RT stud in his kevlar helmet. “Chahkamnit, I’m gonna want a rapid dust-off. On my word: count of five: mark.”
The twin-rotored troop-carrier thundered, standing on the flattened grass. A platoon of orc marines left the APCs and doubled across the field towards it.
Two figures followed them, more slowly, and where those walked, shadow haunted the grass. Graagryk did not question their going. Could not notice it, save as the withdrawal of a nightmare not remembered on waking.
“Have your report complete by the time we land at Ferenzia, Commissar,” Ashnak ordered. “I’ll listen to it there.”
The orc, sweating in her heavy greatcoat, stared across the Graagryk landing field at the approaching figures.
“Sir, I can’t approve the presence of non-orcish civilians on military transport! It isn’t wise during the present crisis. Orc lips make slips—”
Ashnak swung his head around and displayed a grin so full of teeth that the marine commissar saluted twice and made for the Chinook on the double. Ashnak waited, the Hind’s rotor-blast whipping the material of his camouflage trousers, GI pot pulled down over his beetling brows, pipe-weed cigar in one corner of his mouth. The heavy flak jacket made him sweat.
“Field Marshal.” The nameless necromancer greeted Ashnak silkily. The slender, handsome Man wrinkled his ascetic features at the peculiarly pungent smell of hot orc and fanned himself with his Man-skin fan. “You are ready to transport the Dark Lord to Ferenzia, I trust?”
The sashed leather robes of the necromancer and his waist-length black hair fluttered in the rotor-blast from the helicopter gunship. The Dark Lord’s fine mesh robe did not stir. The winds did not disturb Her glossy yellow hair. The heat did not spring sweat from Her piebald skin.
“We go to Ferenzia in peace,” She said clearly. “I will have no fighting, Field Marshal Ashnak. Neither there nor here. My servant the nameless necromancer will remain here as My regent. Your marines are to obey him as they would obey Me.”
Ashnak saluted. “Of course, Dread Lord, Ma’am. Naturally.”
She turned her back on the nameless necromancer and walked towards the Hind, barefoot on grass that withered under Her feet. Ashnak followed, webbing clanking with grenades, magazines, and his shoulder-slung M16.
“Diplomacy, little Ashnak. Peace.” Her upward-tilting, rheumy eye-sockets glowed with a certain fiery amusement. Her small tusks lifted Her turned-back lip, and a trickle of saliva slid down Her chin. Without bothering to wipe it, She said, “There is one thing more before I leave.”
She did not raise Her voice, but it carried over the mechanised roar of the Chinook’s takeoff as they approached the Hind. The smell of hot metal and oil filled the air. Ashnak chewed his cigar and tightened his webbing. RT traffic whispered in his headset.
“I think your orc marines will trouble My creature the nameless.”
“No, great Sable Lord,” Ashnak protested.
“I will make him a more suitable commander for them.” Her eyes laughed, and momentarily flashed green: the Paladin of the Light looking out from Her face in panic. The glimpse of the trapped soul vanished. “When this body was otherwise, it once said, ‘He wears my virtue, unearned, on his face, as I wear the ugliness of his sin on my body.’”
The Lord of Night and Silence held out Her arms, gazing down at Her borrowed body as they came to the Hind. Looking up into the belly of the machine, She asked, “Am I ugly, as Men conceive it? Possibly. I will not be laughed at, Ashnak, in Ferenzia.”
“Think You’re a damned handsome woman, myself, Dread Lord,” Ashnak said gallantly. “We’re cleared for takeoff, so if—”
“Brother, take your shape again!”
She raised Her blank orange gaze. Piebald black and grey withdrew, tidally, leaving skin of a pinkish-cream. Soft blond lashes lay over down-softened cheeks. Her long eyes were now level and wide-set, under gull-wing brows, and Her lips curved lusciously bronze over small, even teeth.
“Very nice, Ma’am,” Ashnak said unenthusiastically.
A high, wavering, and prolonged shriek sounded from the far side of the airfield.
“Come!” The Dark Lord clapped Ashnak on the shoulder with that Virtue-augmented strength that had staggered the orc in a small church in a northern village. Ashnak glanced up at the bubble-glass cabin and Lieutenant Chahkamnit.
“Cleared to go!” Ashnak handed the Dark Lord a helmet and headset, helping Her into the armoured body of the machine.
She buckled the helmet down over Her blond hair. Lieutenant Chahkamnit, glancing across, took the full benefit of glowing orange eye-sockets, sat rigidly forward in his pilot’s seat, and began flight-checks with a concentration that nothing short of air-to-air missile fire could have disturbed.
“I’ll ride gunner.” Ashnak climbed in behind the lanky black orc lieutenant, who was wearing a bomber jacket and a close-fitting leather flying helmet and goggles. Chahkamnit pushed foot pedals and pulled levers, and the troop-carrier lifted with an earsplitting roar.
“My creature Ashnak.” The Sable Lord’s voice sounded over the headset.
“Yes, Dark Lord?” Ashnak watched Graagryk dwindle to toy houses; agricultural patterns, pastel shapes on the Inland Sea’s coast. The Hind drove nose-down, due south.
“I will not have My peace negotiations disturbed. There must be no brushfire wars on the Southern Kingdoms’ borders. What has happened to your major who reported from Gyzrathrani?”
Chahkamnit glanced at his superior officer, who remained silent.