A small orc in smart brown uniform tunic and breeches backed through the doorway, holding a silver breakfast salver in one steel- and one orc-hand. A clean white towel hung over his arm, and he jauntily wore a tall white cook’s hat.
“Good morning, General, sir!” Major Barashkukor said. “How would you like your witness?”
Ashnak chuckled. “Well done!”
The small orc whipped off the domed cover of the salver to disclose sizzling haunch of halfling, crisped to a dark brown. Ashnak seized it and sank his teeth in it, saying through a full mouth, “That’ll do nicely…”
“Last of the young Meadowsweet spawn, sir.” Barashkukor assumed an expression of modesty. “Cooked it myself. Glad you like it, sir. I told the Order of White Mages it was deer-haunch, sir, and they let me through. After they’d insisted on tasting it first.”
Ashnak stripped the succulent meat to the bone, broke the bone and sucked the marrow, the chains on his wrists hardly hampering him at all.
“What about my other order?” he rumbled.
“Yessir!” The small major unbuttoned his uniform jacket and removed a spare set of dogtags. He held the nullity talismans in his hand for a bewildered moment, then scrambled up onto the bunk and passed the chains over Ashnak’s heavy head, dropping the tags down under the fettered orc’s ragged marine sweatshirt. “There you are, sir.”
Staves clashed down the passage and a dozen of the white-surcoated Ferenzi Order of Mages appeared. The female Man who was their leader scowled at Ashnak, who wiped the last halfling-grease from his chin and drew himself up to his full stature.
“You!” she said harshly. “To court, now, and no tricks. My mages will burn you where you stand if you try anything. I would welcome the chance to wipe you from the face of the earth.”
Ashnak regarded their tall ironwood mage-staffs and bared his brass-capped fangs in a smile. “Kiss my ass!”
“Excuse me, madam.” Barashkukor belatedly climbed down from the plank bed, removing and folding his towel and chef’s hat. Under the chef’s hat he wore a flat peaked cap with major’s insignia. “I am Major Barashkukor of Five Company. According to marine regulations, appointed the Prisoner’s Friend.” He beamed at Ashnak. “I am even now preparing your defence, sir.”
The white mage looked down at the orc, her serenely beautiful features wrinkling in disgust. With no more words the mages fell in around Ashnak as he left the cell, Barashkukor at his heels, and strode down the echoing tunnels of the prison.
A covered bridge took them from the prison to the court. The noise of a crowd could be heard through the bridge’s ventilation slits. Ashnak’s deep eyes glinted in the gloom. He quickened his step, forcing the mages to run to keep up. His chains dragged three or four yards behind him, sweeping away the dust of ages.
“Here…” Panting, the head of the mage escort handed Ashnak over to the court ushers at the entrance to the courtroom. Most of the ushers were halflings. The two who approached Ashnak were orcs with “DEPUTY USHER” stencilled across their fatigues.
“As you suggested, sir, I mentioned to the lads that they might like to come along.” Barashkukor beamed up at the gallery on the left of the door, his cyborg-eye whirring. Upwards of two hundred orcs packed the tiered seats, their elbows, shoulders, and knees crushing the dwarves, elves, halflings, and Men sitting in with them. The orc marines threw nuts and offal and chorused barrack-room songs. Their whistles and orc-calls echoed through the court’s high vault. The grunts chanted, “Ash-nak! Ash-nak!”
“How very touching.” Ashnak let his eyes sweep the courtroom—the witness stand in front of the judge’s bench, the desks for prosecuting and defence counsels, and the twelve good Ferenzi and true sitting in the jury box. Members of Ferenzia’s general public filed in towards the last gallery seats.
“Oh, it’s such a shame…” A female dwarf wept copiously as two orc grunts helped her towards a seat. “He didn’t do it, he’s a nice boy…He’s my only support in my old age!”
“Your support?” one hulking, granite-skinned orc queried.
“Aw, she wants Court Four,” the other grunt said, his ugly features clearing. “Thoin Bardsbane, the dwarf axe murderer.”
“My little boy!” the old dwarf female wept, tears trickling into her beard. “He didn’t do it!”
“Haven’t they hanged Thoin Bardsbane already?” the first grunt remarked.
“Naw.” The second orc paused. “Hung, drawn, and quartered.”
The female dwarf broke into a howl and buried her sobbing face in a kerchief. The two orcs in green fatigues escorted her back out of the courtroom. Their voices came faintly to Ashnak:
“When did that happen, then? I never seen a quartered dwarf.”
“You missed it. Sunrise, that was. Pretty good, too…”
A staff tapped on the tiles behind Ashnak and he turned to see a grizzled orc sergeant-major intercept a white-haired old Man in grey robes. “’Ere, you! No weapons in the Hall of Justice!”
The old Man seemed to become even more hunched and bent. Leaning on the gnarled oak, he quavered, “Would you deny a feeble old man his staff?”
The orc sergeant-major guffawed.
“No, you don’t, granddad, I’ve been had like that before!” The orc plucked the staff away, snapped it over his knee, and tossed the pieces back out of the door.
“But, but—”
“If you can’t walk, crawl!”
Ashnak watched the old Man crawl on all fours up the gallery steps. Then he turned his head and nodded. The orc ushers slammed the outer doors of the courtroom on the White Mages and shoved bars into place.
Ashnak twisted his hands in the spellcast chains, pulled, and snapped the steel links. He stripped the fetters away, muscles bulging, and took a pistol from Barashkukor, which he shoved under the waistband of his combat trousers.
“You!” Ashnak strode forward, pointing at a halfling usher. “Call this court to order. I will not suffer this unruly behaviour.”
“But—but—but—”
“That’s contempt.”
FOOM!
“I will not stand for contempt in this courtroom!”
To orcish yowls of applause, Ashnak blew smoke from the Colt .45’s muzzle. He loped up onto the judge’s bench and seated himself in the carved, high-backed chair. Ashnak donned a pair of half-spectacles abandoned on the bench and gazed righteously down into the court, bald head and peaked ears gleaming.
“Clear up that mess!” At the snap of his fingers, six more halflings rushed forward with buckets. Ashnak turned his heavy-jawed head towards prosecuting counsel’s desk.
“You! Counsel for the Prosecution.” Ashnak’s bushy brows lowered. His deep-set eyes gleamed over the half-spectacles. “Why have you not yet made your speech?”
A small curly-footed halfling in brown breeches, the only being as yet sitting by the prosecution’s desk, first looked over his shoulder, then all around, and then back at Ashnak.
“Me?”
“State your case!” Ashnak roared.
“But—” The halfling stood, nervously smoothing down his waistcoat. “But, Your Honour, I’m a witness, not the counsel for the prosecution.”
“That’s contempt!”
FOOOOMM!
Ashnak looked over his half-spectacles at marine Major Barashkukor, standing smartly to attention behind the defence’s table. “Let that witness take the oath.”
Barashkukor poked around on the floor and finally held up the halfling’s severed hand.
“Does he swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing like the truth?”