“Amarynth the Paladin-Mage! You commanded the forces of the Light at Nin-Edin!”
Ned Brandiman ducked his head. The expected explosion failed to materialise. Ned, who never let a previously friendly meeting dictate the likelihood of a permanent alliance, congratulated himself on his caution when Perdita del Verro scowled and continued:
“Holy One, I’m extremely glad we’ve met. I was badly taken in by those scum of Nin-Edin and their criminal allies. When I found out what they’d done in the mountains after the siege—”
“After?” Amarynth sounded surprised.
The elf lifted a brow, distorting the brawler’s scar that crossed her cheek. Her voice echoed clearly across the courtyard of the Blasted Redoubt. “You don’t know, Sir Knight? Mother of Trees! While there’s yet time before the election, then—I know something about the orcs of Nin-Edin that you ought to know.”
7
The seventh day before the final election to the Throne of the World dawned bright and clear.
Early summer light chased down the masts of ships moored at Port Mirandus. Long shadows spidered from the beasts, Men, and monstrosities lading craft to catch the morning tide. Shouts and the creaking of ropes echoed back from the warehouse frontages on the quayside, and leather-winged vampire gulls shrieked, soaring down the estuary of the River Faex that here flows into the Western Ocean. Haze, presaging warmth, drifted across the harbour’s lapping, odourous waves.
“The Lord of Darknesh’s orders are perfectly clear,” the nameless necromancer slurred primly, from under the concealment of his cowl. “Send no relieving forces to Thyrion or anywhere else.”
“Damn it, Man, my marines are getting chewed up out there!”
Ashnak, general officer commanding the orc marines, spat over the side of his barge. An unlucky harbour fish rose to the surface, belly-up. “We could send in support troops any time She lets us!”
A gloved hand went up to the hood, came down glistening with saliva. “What an interesting coincidence—since it takshes time to do the logistical planning for moving an army. Ready to move, are you, orc? I wonder what you were planning before She returned?”
Ashnak avoided that issue. “All I know is, there’s a damn good fight going on out there, and She won’t let me—my orcs, I mean—join in!”
“Of coursh not. While the Bugs are advancing on the borders of the Southern Kingdoms, they’re pressure to vote for Her Dark Magnificence…Orc, you will do no fighting until the elecshion’s won, and your foot soldiers must become used to dying while they wait.” The nameless necromancer whuffled a laugh. “It’sh like old times—orcses to waste.”
The nameless limped off towards the silk canopies at the rear of the barge.
“And fuck you, asshole,” Ashnak grated.
Air flattened the water over the great fleet of upriver barges. The whuck-whuck-whuck of an approaching Apache helicopter gunship aroused no curiousity. The dockhands of Port Mirandus are used to miracles.
“Steady!” Ashnak bawled into his headset microphone.
“Oh, I say, sir, do give a chap some credit. I am doing my…best. There! There you are, sir.”
Lieutenant Chahkamnit’s voice fell silent over the radio link as the steel crate the orc pilot was lowering touched the deck of the rivership. The Apache hovered while two deckhands unhooked the load, then rose again, cable winching, nose down, rotors beating the water into circumferences of foam.
“Park that damn thing on one of the air-support barges,” Ashnak ordered, “and get your ass back here, Chahkamnit! This travelling election circus should have cast off four hours ago!”
“Absolutely, sir. Just as you say.”
Ashnak thumbed his headset off. Marine Commissar Razitshakra stood beside him on the rivership’s deck, olive greatcoat hanging open in the southern heat, her peaked cap pulled down to her wire-spectacled nose.
“Prepare to interrogate the prisoner!” Ashnak barked, pointing.
“Sir, yes sir!” Commissar Razitshakra enthusiastically snapped the steel crate’s holding pins bare-handed. The front of the crate fell open. “It’s been too long since we’ve had some honest prisoner-torturing just for the fun of it, sir.”
A large body huddled in the close confines of the crate. It wore excrement-stained desert camouflage fatigues. Ashnak chewed more ferociously on his cigar and peered down at the broad-shouldered, big, and solidly built Man, dirty with days of confinement, the stubble on his chin growing out the same blond as his crewcut.
“On your feet, marine!” Ashnak snarled.
It rubbed at its streaming eyes. “My name, rank, and number are Sergeant John H. Stryker—sweet Jesus, it’s still fuckin’ real!”
“He speaks marine,” Commissar Razitshakra observed.
The Man stared out of the steel crate. “This cannot be real, man. I promise I won’t ever do that shit again! I’ve got a wife and kids at home.”
“He checks out. Same aura as Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, General.”
Stryker forced his big body to rise, straightening for the first time after six days’ confinement in a metre-square steel crate. Staggering, filthy, on his feet, he felt the warm, stinking breeze of a harbour blow across his face. The skin around his eyes twitched, and his eyelids opened again.
A humanoid thing stood in front of him. Eight feet tall, muscled like a mountain; predator’s fangs, leather-skinned, cat-quick, and with the frightening gleam of high intelligence in its piggy eyes. Even with its shoulders humped and long arms dangling, it stared Stryker levelly in the eye.
And there was a cigar jutting from its tusked nightmare of face.
It wore…
Stryker chuckled deeply. In his Stateside Germanic accent, he said, “You guys can’t fool me! Either this is the best shit I ever cut, or you guys are making a summer season movie. But I’m warning you—you shouldn’t have messed with the Corps.”
Ashnak drew deeply, then blew the odd-smelling smoke from his cigar into Stryker’s face. “We are the Corps. What are you?”
“Please!” Stryker’s stubbled chin began to twitch. His face crumpling, his eyes began to leak water. He sat down on the deck as if his hamstrings had been severed. “Don’t hurt me!”
“Show some guts, Man!” Razitshakra growled. “You’re a marine! Don’t disgrace your uniform!”
“What’s the matter with you, son?” Ashnak inquired, nudging the now-sobbing Stryker with the toe of a combat boot. “Anyone would think you’d never seen an orc before.”
The Man raised his stained face. “A what?”
Razitshakra’s whip ripped a channel across the back of his ribs, tearing his combat jacket and his flesh. He screamed, a full-blooded man’s scream, hand going up, and a metal-thonged whip coiled around his wrist, bloodying his knuckles. He grabbed the thong.
“For fuck’s sake, you can’t do that!”
Razitshakra tugged speculatively on the whip’s butt, with no effort pulling him clear across deck.
“The traditional methods are the best,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s the Way of the Orc. To torture prisoners. I’ll strip the hide from him and then, when he’s flayed, he’ll talk.”
“I’ll talk, I’ll talk now!” Stryker scrabbled across the barge deck. “Hey, you just ask me—I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! This is too fuckin’ crazy for me. I’ve never been in combat, never mind under heavy interrogation.”