The big Agaku grinned, showing more than one broken fang. “Who am I? Perhaps you’d like us to introduce ourselves?”
“Yeah!” Marukka challenged. “Who are you?”
The big Agaku strolled over until he was looming head-and-shoulders over the orange-haired orc. His voice carrying in the sudden silence, he said, “That, with the standard, is Marine First Class Zarkingu. You, soldier, are not fit to wipe her arse, lowly though she is. Over there is Corporal Shazgurim, and beside her Corporal Imhullu. You are not fit to even think about wiping their arses. And I, soldier, am Gunnery Sergeant Ashnak and you are not fit to even breathe in my presence, do you understand me?”
“Wh’…” The strange words bemused Marukka.
Barashkukor looked up at Ashnak, eyes shining.
Beside him, Marukka shook herself and narrowed her eyes. “Why you shit-faced—”
Ashnak’s fist went up, came down on Marukka’s head, and the orc fell to her knees, poleaxed. A gasp went through the crowd. Growls and snarls sounded in the noon heat. A few dozen of the garrison orcs began to edge forward with drawn knives.
The big Agaku turned his back and strolled across to the makeshift traverse, at which point he barked: “‘TenHUT!”
The two Corporals and the Marine First Class slammed their heels together, bulging arms hanging at their sides, beetle-browed eyes facing ahead, narrowed against the light. Ashnak lifted his head and looked round the garrison again.
“I’m here to make you balls of shit into soldiers,” he announced. “You sure as fuck won’t ever make the rank of Corporal. I doubt I’ll see any MFCs. You’re not the Agaku, but by the time I’m finished, I’ll make you dumb grunts into Orc Marines!”
Jeers and yells echoes off the sides of the mountain pass. The garrison orcs leaped up and down, chanting, foaming at the mouth. Barashkukor fought to keep his balance.
Gunnery Sergeant Ashnak swung the heavy piece of metal off his shoulder, did something to it with his horny hands that made it click and slam, and lifted it to his shoulder. Barashkukor glimpsed something that looked like a crossbow trigger-grip and flung himself face-down on the earth.
A loud explosion split the air, and a whoosh of heat scalded the compound. Barashkukor lifted his head as a loud whumph! sounded. Metal fragments sprayed the crowd of orcs, scything down bodies and slicing limbs from torsos.
The chain of the portcullis flailed, cut cleanly in two. Three masonry blocks fell out of the gate-house wall. The portcullis itself, falling free, buried its spikes eighteen inches deep in the earth under the gateway, impaling three small orcs.
Silence.
Barashkukor slowly dared to breathe.
“I’m here to make you into marines!” Ashnak bawled, “and you’re going to stay here until you are marines! Now get in ranks.”
A minute’s furious shoving put Barashkukor in the front of the war-band as it straggled into an approximation of rank and file. Excitement burned in his breast. He put on his over-large helmet and pushed it down level with his eyes, sloped his mace across his shoulder, and drew himself up as straight as he could. The gunnery sergeant strolled up to one end of the ranks, and then back down, and heaved a deep sigh.
“Standatt—ease!” he barked. The three Agaku relaxed their erect posture slightly. Some of the garrison orcs copied them. Ashnak spun round. “Not you! You’ll stand at attention until I tell you different. Attennn-shun!”
Barashkukor thumped his bare heels down into the dirt. The big Agaku caught his eye for a moment, and Barashkukor straightened still further. Ashnak nodded slightly.
“Now listen up!” Ashnak strolled back to the centre of the compound. “You scum can consider yourselves in training for a mission for the nameless. And since it’s an emergency mission, that means emergency training, and that means it carries on, day and night, night and day, until you get it right. Right, marines?”
“Erm…”
“…well…”
Ashnak shouldered his metal weapon threateningly. “Now listen to me, you…you…halflings! You’re talking to an officer! From now on, the first word and the last word out of your mouths is gonna be sir, you got that?”
Barashkukor led the ragged reply:
“Sir, yes sir!”
Ashnak scowled and bellowed, “Can’t hear you!”
Four hundred orc voices bellowed: “SIR YES SIR!”
“That’s better. That’s better, you halflings, I can almost hear you.” Ashnak fished in his pockets for another roll of pipe-weed and jammed it into the corner of his broken-tusked mouth. “Now let me hear you say what you are. You’re not garrison orcs. You’re not whatever poxy tribe littered you. You’re marines. That flag on the standard is your flag, if you’re ever worthy of it. Marines are the best. Marines are killing machines. What are you?”
Barashkukor straightened his slouching spine until he thought it would crack. The strange words the big Agaku used were becoming instantly familiar, almost part of his own tongue. No magic-sniffer, he nonetheless felt by orc-instinct that presence of sorcery, geas, or curse. But if the Marine First Class (Magic-Disposal) wasn’t complaining…He fixed his gaze directly ahead and sang out: “We are marines!”
His voice was almost lost in the full-throated chorus.
Ashnak, grinning, snarled, “Can’t hear you! What are you?”
“SIR, MARINES, SIR!”
Will put his feet up on the brass-bound chests, rocking to the movement of the ox-cart. He drank deeply from the ale bottle and passed it up to his brother, returning to the chickens, half side of pork, flitch of bacon, and four dozen small loaves that the cart had also been carrying.
The quiet farmland slid past them. The ox lowed from time to time, missing its former mistress, but Ned Brandiman flicked it with a carter’s whip from time to time, ensuring cooperation.
“I tell you one thing I want,” Ned said through a mouthful of bread and bacon. “I want an easier way to carry our equipment!”
Will scratched under the arms of his ripped doublet, by practise avoiding both the mail-shirt and his store of poisoned needles. “I’ll be happy to stick to city thefts.”
“Brother, you’re a fool. Name me a city that isn’t going to be sieged and sacked when the war comes.”
“Ha! Name me one that won’t grow up like a weed, twice as hardy, afterwards. Merchants never fail to fatten on wars. Even on the Last Battle.”
Evening’s golden light shone on the growing fields. No poppies yet to bloody the green corn. Smoke began to curl up from the chimneys of distant towns. Will shifted round, tugging at the crotch of his tattered trunk-hose, and staring whimsically back at the mountains.
“Do you think the orc garrison will have worked it out yet—that we fooled them into giving us an armed escort to the edge of the wilderness?”
“And transporting our baggage too? Call it part payment from our nameless employer.” Ned Brandiman reached back. Will placed a cold partridge in the outstretched small hand. His brother added, “So far all we’ve had for our work is whippings, beatings, poverty, and—”
“—and is it worth attempting to collect payment from an evil wizard, when his guards are dead or worse, and at any rate trapped under a mountain, and what we set out to thieve is still down there with them?” Will paused.