Belluriel Starharp, sounding very bemused, asked, “What is time to one of the elven-kind?”
Gilmuriel called, “Four o’clock, Sergeant.”
Back pressed flat to a rock outcrop, shivering, he found himself facing the rest of his squad. The elves lay face-down in a cluster in the leafmould of the forest floor, fingernails digging into the dirt. Only Corporal Silthanis had taken any reasonable cover: the tall, dark-skinned elf was scrunched down behind a fallen tree.
“First time under fire,” the orc sergeant sighed. “Damn squeakies.”
BOOM! Dukka-dukka-FOOM!
The orc broke cover, sprinting across the ground in a low crouch, seizing two elves by their sweat-soaked combat jacket collars and dragging them towards the rocks. “Move your asses or you’re dead meat!”
Dakashnit threw Byrna Silkentress and the ex-healer-mage Ravenharp the White into the cover of the granite outcrops. She ducked her head and shambled back across the open ground towards the recruits. Gilmuriel saw her jerk, miss a step, then run on at a crouch.
TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA!
Adrenaline fired him. He drew his pistol, winced at the feel of cold iron, and replaced it in the holster; sprinted across the open ground of the killing zone—muzzle flashes to the right of the line of march: thirty metres—and dragged Aradmel Brightblade to her feet.
“Move your buddy into the rocks!”
The elf stared at him with glazed eyes. Gilmuriel backhanded her across the jaw, then sucked the skinned knuckles of hands not used to violence. Marine Aradmel ran for the rocks on her own. The lieutenant got both hands under Marine Illurian’s armpits and dragged her, combat-booted heels jouncing, back into the granite outcrop.
DAKKA-FOOOMM!
“Fuck, man!” The orc sergeant hit the rock beside him, crouching down, her brawny shoulder pushed into the moss-covered granite. Her helmet was missing—out in open ground, Gilmuriel saw, with a smear of silver metal across it—and sweat shone in her cropped, bleached crest. “You did good, L.t.”
The elf blushed a delicate rose at her praise.
Busily re-tying the red sweatband around her bloodstained brows, Dakashnit said quietly, “Gonna have to assault through the enemy position. Now, L.t. Call us in some indirect fire support for when we’ve fought through.”
“Byrna Silkentress!” Gilmuriel signalled to his radio operator, crouched behind a rock five yards away. The tiny black-haired elf shivered and wept, a dark stain spreading at the crotch of her combat trousers. “Marine Byrna! Raise the artillery camp and call in fire support on this position—five minutes, on my mark—now.”
Trembling so that her fingers could hardly work the radiocom, the elf marine obeyed. Lieutenant Gilmuriel leaned back, tensed his thighs, and lifted himself to peer over the top of the granite outcrop. Only his blond hair, his eyes, and the tops of his pointed ears showed. “Prepare to advance—”
Ker-FOOM!
“—what the fuck was that?”
“Mortar, sounds like. I reckon we’ll re-supply at Firebase Charlie,” Dakashnit speculated. “Remind me to stock you guys up on mortars. Hey, squeaky! Bug-bait! Wake up. That’s the fucking enemy over there. Start firing back!”
Takka-takka-dukka-dukka-FOOM!
“Yo, man! I see you, you son of a bitch!”
The orc reared up, General Purpose Machinegun grasped in her taloned paws, firing from the hip. The noise wrenched all breath from Gilmuriel’s lungs. He refilled them to yell, “Give that orc supporting fire, you miserable pointy-eared bastards, or I’ll shoot you myself!”
“Way to go, L.t.!” Sergeant Dakashnit fell back into cover beside Gilmuriel. “Listen up, you elves—those are the Bugs that chewed up Baradaka’s squad! Fireteam One, give ’em hell; Fireteam Two, advance under covering fire. Go!”
Gilmuriel, under cover of a ragged barrage from Silthanis and half the squad, loped at a crouch up to another granite outcrop. One glance over his shoulder showed him a hostile, running left to right, hitting cover—
The glimpse of black chitinous shell dripping with bodily secretions, the half-humanoid form with its scorpion tail raised high, shining blue-black and silver in the dappled leaf-light; the noise of the firefight—all this conspired to make Gilmuriel’s stomach churn. The elf bent forward and vomited. “We’re fucking dead!”
“Fight through,” Dakashnit bawled, “or we’ll have our own fucking mortars landing on our heads—what the fuck is that?”
“Magery! No,” Gilmuriel corrected himself, elvish instincts screaming. “No, it isn’t…”
Across the leaf-strewn expanse of the Bugs’ killing ground, the sun and shadow-dappled air twisted and somehow opened. A dark silhouette became visible within it. Too stocky for an elf, too tall for an orc. The shape of a Man, outlined in black fire.
The elf whispered, “It has no smell of Good or Evil about it!”
Dakashnit hastily changed magazines. “Look at the Bugs, L.t. It’s stopped ’em cold. They ain’t got no fucking idea what it is, either!”
The air folded, taking into itself green shadows and sunlight, becoming a whirling vortex of golden light. The Man-silhouette suddenly snapped into movement.
“Mother of Forests protect us!” Gilmuriel gaped, his jaw dropping. The three-dimensional figure of a Man appeared out of the vortex, facing the elf lieutenant, seeming to step backwards from something that was not the Forest of Thyrion.
“Holy shit!” Dakashnit half-straightened from her crouch.
The sounds of gunfire fell silent on both sides.
The orc’s eyes gleamed, and all her tusks showed in a grin. “Do you know what that is?”
The Man stood quite still, his polished brown combat boots crushing the leaves under his feet with undeniable solidity. He was almost as tall as an elf, but broad across the shoulders and massively muscled. Gilmuriel let his gaze travel up the Man’s body—brown-and-ochre camouflage fatigues; web-belt, pouches, and pistol; commando knife; rubber-edged dogtag shining on a silver chain—until it reached the face. Sunlight-dappled regular, square features, a strong jawline, and crewcut hair glinting blond. The Man’s piercing blue eyes met his.
“What is that?” the elf mumbled.
“That’s a real marine!” Gunnery Sergeant Dakashnit brandished her GPMG. “Just feel the aura on that! I ain’t felt nothing like it since I was up in old Dagurashibanipal’s caverns—I don’t know where he’s from, or how the fuck he got here, but that is one genuine marine. The finest killing machine ever devised by Man. The elite. The best.”
The orc straightened, as much as orcs are able, gripping stock and barrel of the machinegun. She threw the GPMG bodily towards the Man. Smoothly and as if by long training, the Man raised his hands and the GPMG slapped into his grip.
Dakashnit called, “Yo, m’man! Hostiles thirty metres to your rear! Chaarge!”
The smartly uniformed Man turned his head slowly. No hurry. No hesitation.
Ninety feet away, their chitinous heads weaving as if bemused by the vortex’s visitation, the Bugs emerged slowly out of light cover. Thyrion’s green fronds caressed sticky black carapaces, horns, and clawed forelimbs. The slender scorpion tails curved up. Shadow slid across the belts and packs slung across their articulated thoraxes, glinting from the black metal of their weapons. One opened its vast jaws in a sticky, slime-dripping yawn. Gilmuriel shuddered.