Grunts

Book 416: Gateway Essentials

by Mary Gentle

Genres: Fantasy; Dark Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

What is an orc? An orc is an 18 stone fighting machine, made of muscle, hide, talon and tusk, with a villainous disposition and a mean sense of humour. And, of course, an orc is a poor dumb grunt - the much abused foot soldier of the Evil Horde of Darkness. The usual last battle of Good against Evil is about to begin. Orc Captain Ashnak and his war-band know exactly what they can expect. The forces of Light are outnumbered, full of headstrong heroes devoid of tactics - but the Light's still going to win. Orcs - the sword fodder in the front line - will die by the thousands. Life's a bitch.

Release date: November 3, 2009

Publisher: Ace

Print pages: 464

Sample

SMARTER THAN ROOT VEGETABLESan introduction to Grunts!byMary Gentle

Why orcs?

Actually, the more usual way to phrase that question – especially in the case of the Orc Marines – is, ‘Why? Why? Oh dear lord, WHY?!’

Orcs have always had a very poor press …

I’d wanted to do something about that ever since devouring The Lord of the Rings around the age of nine. Maybe it was sympathy for the underdog – maybe, at that age, a vague unease about class and race – but it was obvious to me that Tolkien’s orcs got the short and dirty end of the stick, and that this was Not Fair.

But how you could treat their apparent character as football-hooligan thugs, incapable of redemption or intelligence, and still stay true to … well … their ‘orcishness’ – had me puzzled.

We cut from age 9 to the start of the 1990s.

As part of the Midnight Rose company – put together to edit fantasy and SF anthologies of short stories – my particular invention was Villains!: genre fantasy as seen from the bad guys’ point of view.

At the beginning of the 1990s that was still a new idea. I remain proud of Villains!, though it’s now long out of print; we had some notably twisted and entertaining stories, from some notably twisted and entertaining writers …

And I thought that, as well as editing, I might have a go at a short story for the anthology, from the viewpoint of orcs.

Did I have the slightest idea how to do it?

Frustratingly, the answer was still no.

During one phone conversation, a fellow editor made a guess at how I might be likely to portray them. ‘“Proud but misunderstood members of a noble warrior race”?’

Which, to be fair, wasn’t a bad bet, given what I’d written up until then.

‘No …’ I said, as realisation dawned. ‘No. More like, “mean motherfuckers with big guns”!’

And around the time that the ‘short story’ passed the 25,000 word mark, I realised that submitting it to the judgement of the other Midnight Rose editors was a moot point – I had the start of a novel on my hands.

As to where the inspiration (to use a term loosely) came from – I blame gaming. And the Gulf War. And a speeding coach on the Finchley Road. And Dean Wayland. Not necessarily in that order.

A couple of years earlier I’d been introduced to war-gaming, and table-top role-playing games, and Live Role-play. And introduced to gamers and their sense of humour. Gamers, given any concept, tend to fold, spindle and mutilate it, bounce it off the walls a couple of times, and turn it inside out to wear as a party-hat… I like that.

So I’d been playing Viet Nam-era and modern military war-games, AD&D and Call of Cthulhu RPGs, and doing two kinds of outdoor live gaming – milsim exercises, and Fantasy Live Role-play. The military simulation games were firmly based in science fiction – Aliens’ ‘Colonial Marines’, and other media military SF. And the Fantasy LRP scenarios left no source from book, TV and film unravaged, but had Tolkien and more modern fantasists as their primary inspiration.

At some point, the sight of people running around in camouflage with Big Guns merged in my mind with the fantasy creatures…

And lo! – or possibly, Yo! – there were Orc Marines.

The story-seed took root and grew. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that the discovery of a magically-cursed dragon-hoard, consisting of weapons gathered from different dimensions – including 20c Earth – should result in scabby little orcs achieving the status of lean, mean, M16-wielding marines … Isn’t that reasonable?

In 1990/91, the Gulf War – the Desert Shield/Desert Storm version – was being fought. I got to talk to people serving in various Armed Forces. A lot of the story in Grunts! comes simply from looking at The Lord of the Rings, and genre fantasy as it existed up to 1990, and thinking: what would this be like if it were real?

Well, war would be hell, the way it always is.

Military humour tends to have a certain macabre quality to it which I’ve always liked – it’s similar to the humour of medical students, or members of the emergency services. That close to death and dismemberment – and instances of sheer human stupidity – people laugh or crack up.

And the orcs, I thought, are definitely the Poor Bloody Infantry of the Dark Lord …

Tolkien put a lot of his First World War experiences into fantasy, but he was writing an epic, and the epic form rarely troubles itself with the subversive, or the cowardly, or with macabre satire. It seemed to me that, if there were orcs, and if there were war … sometimes you would laugh. And sometimes shudder. And sometimes you’d do both at the same time. I just laughed at what?

And then we come to the speeding coach.

Possibly I had a considerable amount of fellow-feeling for black humour while I was working on Grunts! Just prior to starting the book, I was in a road traffic accident, and I was in the process of some recovery while writing it.

I’ve never quite worked out why that put me in a frame of mind to enjoy both cruelty and humour – the edgy territory of what is blackly humorous, as well as what’s plain frivolous and purely silly. But I’m convinced Grunts! wouldn’t have been written the way it is if I hadn’t been adapting to the after-effects of spinal injury and mobility problems. There’s a grim bedrock to the humour, reading it again after several years, that stands out to me even more than when I was writing it.

What’s lasted in my mind about Grunts! though, is how much fun it was to write, despite the situation.

And the characters have stayed with me – which is strange for slapstick and satire.

In the same way that the story starts from taking fantasy warfare and asking ‘what happens if this is real?’, a lot of the characters stem from the same speculation. If halflings had any visible sex lives, you might well get Magda Brandiman, BDSM whorehouse-owner. If orcs were smarter than root vegetables, you’d get the violent, witty, and highly pragmatic orc commander Ashnak. If cannon-fodder orcs developed all the military virtues of discipline and self-control and extreme violence, but no conscience, there would be Orc Marines – and fantasy-Earths would be in deep, deep trouble …

Looking back, I have a great deal of affection for all of them – the Dark Lord’s orc-minion Ashnak, born to be a pipeweed-chewing, five-star General. The orcish runt Barashkukor: an insanely positive marine and a very – odd – romantic hero. The supremely practical halfling sons of Magda Brandiman: Will and Ned (… technically it isn’t cannibalism if they’re not your own species …). Not to mention Perdita del Verro, sexy elvish war correspondent for Warrior of Fortune; the Special Undead Services; and the Paladin of the Light, Amarynth, who just happens to know he’s right. All. The. Time.

Oh, and Kar-Sissh: possessed of a chitinous exoskeleton, and a tea habit that would beggar the plantations of the Far East… And mud-wrestling dwarves, Socialist halfling Duchesses, the Dark Lord and His (or, more often, Her) democratic election campaign; the Little Sisters of Mortification, the T54 Main Battle Tank, and – as befits genre fantasy – the human who falls into this world to find his Destiny awaiting him. Shame about him…

It’s true that it takes a certain kind of mind to appreciate the qualities of Grunts! Fortunately there was one at hand during the time I was writing it – Dean Wayland, mentioned in the Acknowledgements as the originator of the line ‘Pass me another elf, Sergeant. This one’s split.’ (From which you may gather that the particular qualities that one needs to appreciate Grunts! are best passed over in tactful silence.)

Like many writers, I kick ideas around with other people, and some of my happiest memories of Grunts! are of Dean and I brainstorming ideas, bouncing plots off each other, acting out orc and hobbit dialogue, and generally using improv to bring large chunks of the story into existence as performance. Whether or not this was a good thing … well, like it also says in the Acknowledgements: he is the man without whom this book would be in far better taste!

Twelve or so years later, I’m both surprised and pleased by what’s happened to Grunts! It’s stayed in print since it was first published; it continues to get fan letters (sometimes from genuine marines). A number of independent gaming companies have allowed as how figures and scenarios have been influenced by Grunts!, which always makes me grin. And when, from time to time, I’ve met live role-players portraying characters from the book, that just seems … poetic. What goes around, comes around.

And now there are the movies.

There is a (possibly apocryphal) story about the computer-generated Orc armies in Peter Jackson’s versions of The Lord of the Rings. Each sprite was individually programmed to fight, and then let loose on the ‘battlefield’. Tens of thousands of cannon-fodder Orcs charged, screaming battle-cries, towards the vast army of Elves and Men …

And two Orcs took one look at the battlefield and the opposing numbers – and turned around and ran like hell.

I like to think that those two were grunts …

IN THE TOWER of the nameless necromancer it is always cold.

The big orc’s breath smoked odorously on the air. He pulled the buckles of his breastplate tighter round his muscled body. Frost sparkled on the laminated black armour sheathing his shoulders, arms and bowed thighs. The sorcerous cold bites into orc-flesh as no ordinary winter can.

‘I come,’ he rumbled.

He slung the war-axe and warhammer from his broad, hairy shoulders; and pulled the winged iron helm with its nasal spike more firmly down on his misshapen skull. Even standing to attention he slouches forward; his knuckles hang down beside his knees.

‘Hurry,’ the familiar whimpered. ‘Master calls: hurry–hurry–hurry!’

The orc drew his knobbly foot back, aimed, and kicked the familiar’s lean, hairy buttocks. The familiar shot down the corridor, bouncing off the walls several times.

‘Don’t give orders to Ashnak of the fighting Agaku!’ The big orc guffawed, striding up the nine hundred and ninety-nine steps to the tower’s top chamber.

Ice congealed on the onyx walls. A sorcerous frost snapped at his clawed fingers. He slapped at dirt and dung on his plate armour, shook his tusked head, and raised a great fist to hammer on the oaken doors. Before he could, they drifted silently open. Light from the tower’s single high window slanted down.

The nameless necromancer sprawls in a chair made from the bones of his enemies.

His patchwork robes glittered with the silver thread that sewed together their many disquietingly shaped small pieces of leather. At his feet his staff glowed, quiescently, with the light of dark stars. His head was bowed. Ashnak judged him old, as Man-flesh ages, two or more centuries; but still with the disgusting smoothness of human youth.

‘Master!’ The orc fell to his knees in the darkened tower. His plate harness and weapons clashed loudly in the sorcerous silence.

‘Lord Necromancer!’ he shouted.

The nameless necromancer started violently. Wine spilled from his bone cup down his black robes. His virulent green eyes opened.

‘Um … Who … ?’

The nameless necromancer rubbed a pale, slender hand across his mouth. The skull wine-cup slipped from his other hand, soaking his robe of skins and bouncing off across the flagstones.

‘Wha’ …?’

‘Ashnak,’ the big orc reminded him. ‘Ashnak of the warriors! Ashnak of the fighting Agaku!’

‘Uhnnnn … Ashnash … Now wha’ did I …’

Ashnak, as patiently as is possible for an orc (and a Man-smart Agaku who is facing sorcery can be very patient indeed) said, ‘You summoned me, master. Ashnak of the—’

‘—fighting Agaku, yes, I know. Don’t shout, scum.’

The nameless necromancer leaned his head over the side of the bone chair and was noisily sick. Another of the lean brown familiars shot out from under the dais and began to lap up the vomit.

Something else scurried in the distant shadows. Ashnak stiffened.

‘Damnation!’ The wizard hiccupped, and pointed an unsteady finger. Golden forked lightning spiked from his hand to the corner of the chamber.

The blast rattled even Ashnak’s ear-drums. Stone-chips flew from the black masonry. The offending rat, missed by three yards, scuttled off into the dark.

‘I have a task for you, Ashnak.’

As always after the operation of sorcery, the nameless necromancer’s voice sharpened and became alert.

‘You may take three other warriors with you. No more than three. You are to go in secrecy to where my agent awaits you. I will give you a talisman for recognition. Then you are to be guards while a task is performed for me. After that, you will be told what to do.’

‘Yes, master!’

Ashnak prostrated himself, iron weapons clanging on the flagstones, and banged his forehead three or four times against the stone floor. It was not something that particularly hurt him, and it tended to placate the nameless necromancer.

‘At once, master!’

‘You give me a headache, Ashnak,’ the nameless necromancer said, reaching for a bottle spun from the silicon bones of a foe stranger than is easily comprehended. ‘Go away.’

Two pairs of eyes surveyed the outside of the tavern from slightly less than three feet six inches above ground level.

‘We’re never going to get our gear out of our room,’ Will Brandiman said.

‘Not without running into the Assassins’ Guild,’ Ned Brandiman concluded. ‘They’re bound to have got back here before we did, right, Will?’

Will Brandiman picked up his trailing skirts and faded back from the alley entrance. The laced bodice was uncomfortably tight, restricting his access to the throwing knives strapped under his arms. He coiled the child’s skipping-rope and stuffed it into a pocket.

‘’Fraid so, Ned.’

He glanced at his brother. Ned’s pink-frilled frock had become stained with town dirt, and his brown hair (too short really to plait) was coming out of its braids. He didn’t suppose he looked much better. He rubbed his hand over his chin, and reflected on the odd advantages not having to shave more than twice a month can give.

‘I wouldn’t trust this disguise at close quarters,’ the halfling said, ‘though it’s served us well enough today. We got the job done. Now let me see …’

‘We have to get that crowd out of the tavern room, right?’ his brother halfling asked.

‘Right. And in such a way that the Assassins’ Guild people have to come out with them. So …’

‘So it’s simple.’ Ned pointed above his head at the thatched roof. ‘Set fire to one of the houses over here. Everyone’ll come rushing out – the Guild too, because you can’t refuse fire-fighting duty. Not publicly. We go in, get our stuff, and leave.’

Will raised his eyebrows, pleasantly surprised. ‘What would I do without you, brother? Very well. Let’s find some dry thatch. And, for preference, an occupied building.’

‘Why?—oh.’ Ned grinned. ‘Cries for help’ll bring ’em out running.’

‘Exactly.’

The last of a long summer twilight shone in the west. The flint and steel bristled sparks on to tinder. Will carefully set fire to three strips of cloth ripped from his dress, and poked them up under the low eaves with a stick.

They retreated into darker alleys opposite the tavern.

‘FIRE!’

Raw-throated screaming started.

The tavern emptied a crowd into the winding street. Shouts filled the air. Men and a few elven-kind and dwarves calling for water, buckets, billhooks and sand. Invisible in firelight, the brothers slipped past them into the echoing, empty tavern, sprinting upstairs to their room.

‘Let’s move it!’

Will ripped his dress over his head. His short, stocky frame glowed in the light from the burning buildings. Fingers fumbling, he pulled on shirt, trunk hose, fine mailshirt and doublet. He buckled on his sword, checked the placing of throwing daggers and poisoned needles; and ran over to join Ned where the elder halfling was throwing every piece of gear from dark lanterns to heavy-duty crossbows into the brass-bound chests.

‘Lower ’em down from the back window with the rope,’ Ned said. ‘We’ll go out and round the tavern—’

Will darted across the room and laid the palm of his small hand on the door. He frowned, opened the door a crack, and looked into roaring flames. All the tavern’s stairs blazed.

Burning thatch floats.

‘We’ll jump down after,’ he corrected, shutting the door and coughing. ‘It’s only one floor.’

‘One floor in a Man-building!’

‘If you’d rather roast, Ned—!’

Grinning at the expression on his brother’s face, Will opened the back window and hefted the first chest up on to the sill. Braced, he lowered it by the rope; lowered the second chest; and scrambled up on to the window sill. He took careful aim and jumped.

‘Arrhhh! You little turd!’

In a tangle of knees and elbows, Will got himself together and found the inn yard empty except for the Man he’d landed on. The fat human ostler, still sprawling, opened his mouth to yell again, and Will hit him on the temple with the hilt of his dagger. The Man fell backward.

Ned Brandiman’s feet hit square on the Man’s chest, cushioning his jump also. The Man choked, lips turning blue. The halfling pulled the last pink ribbons from his hair and shook out the braids. He chuckled.

‘Fast work, Will.’

‘No problem, Ned.’

A Man’s voice bawled, ‘Oi! You two!’

Will spun round and ran towards the burly man in working clothes at the yard entrance.

‘Help! Sir, help us! The tavern’s on fire, we were only saved by the heroism of this Man – and I think he’s injured; please, help!’

The stranger, a brawling-looking redheaded man, loped across the inn yard and knelt down by the ostler. While he prodded the recumbent form, Will took a swift look around. No sign of Ned, but the stable doors were open …

Will palmed a knife as he came up behind the redheaded man, and sliced neatly through the jugular vein with the man facing away from him, so that the gout of blood sprayed across the unconscious ostler. He stared thoughtfully up at the tavern. Smoke coiled out between the eaves. He bent and put the red knife in the ostler’s hand.

‘Will! Here!’

Straining to lead a sweating pony, Ned Brandiman staggered out of the stables. Will grabbed a couple of empty boxes and, climbing on them, fixed the brass-bound chests either side of the saddle, and finally leaped up behind Ned as his brother flailed a horse-crop nearly as tall as himself, cracking it against the pony’s flanks.

The hot wind from the fire blew in his face, and Will grinned widely. The poor quarter’s houses and low dives flashed by, lost in the dung kicked up by the pony’s hooves. He shook Ned’s small but muscular shoulder.

‘Slow down!’

His brother heaved on the reins. The pony reluctantly fell into a walk. Ned soothed it, until the flattened ears relaxed; and Will sat straight-backed in the saddle as they paced with dignity through the merchants’ quarter, and the night that here was quiet, towards the sleepy guards on Ruxminster’s city gate.

The orc encampment steamed gently in the sunshine.

Barashkukor, leaning scabby elbows on the parapet of the Nin-Edin fort, gazed down from the mountainside at a wilderness only the vultures could love. He tilted his dented helmet back on his head. ‘So what do you get if you cut the legs off a warrior?’

Marukka gave a baritone chuckle, waving her jagged sword in the air for emphasis. ‘A low-down bum!’

Barashkukor groaned, but quietly in case she should hear him. The young female orc towered above him by a good twenty inches.

‘And what,’ she pursued, ‘do you get if you cut the arms off a low-down bum?’

Barashkukor leaned his pole-axe up against the stone parapet, abandoning all pretence of sentry duty. He scratched at the scabs on his scaly chest, and pulled his scruffy brigandine open – the metal plates sewn into the jacket poked through the worn lining, pinching his tough hide. The hot air sang with emptiness, and the mountain fort glowed like an oven.

‘What do you get if you cut the arms off a low-down bum?’ he repeated.

‘An ’armless low-down bum!’

Barashkukor giggled sycophantically. The female orc planted her bowed legs wide, fists on her hips, and bellowed. Her bright orange hair, caught up into a horse-tail on top of her skull, shook wildly. The rusty mail and plate armour in which she clad herself jingled, as did the knives and maces hanging from her wide leather belt. Her vast breasts strained the buckles of her brigandine.

‘And what—’

Barashkukor sidled along the parapet towards the steps. The rest of the orc band sprawled in the bailey, in the noon heat, around the cooking-pit. Only a few roofless buildings and the outer defences remained of this fort. Barashkukor found it rather homely.

Marukka’s sword-point slammed against the wall an inch in front of his face. He halted and assumed an expression of extreme attentiveness.

‘—what do you get’, she demanded, ‘if you cut the head off a ’armless, low-down bum?’

He considered it in proportion to the nearness of her jagged weapon. ‘Ya got me. What do you get?’

‘A headless chicken.’

Barashkukor said incredulously, ‘“A headless chicken”?’

‘Well – would you stand and fight, with no arms and no legs?’

Marukka slapped her bulging green thigh. Her jaw dropped, and she wheezed. Tears leaked out of the corners of her beetle-browed eyes.

‘That’s good! Isn’t that good? I made that one up myself!’

Barashkukor showed all his fangs and tusks in a grin. ‘Real good, Marukka. You slay ’em.’

‘Sure do.’ She stroked the sword complacently and tucked it back under her belt. ‘Shouldn’t be surprised if I was good enough to be paid. Stinkin’ Men get paid for jokes. I seen that once. I was in a city, once, you know—’

I know, Barashkukor thought. ‘How about a game of Orcball?’ he suggested hastily.

‘Good idea! Aww … We ain’t got a ball.’ Marukka sniffed. She stomped down the steps into the bailey. ‘’Ere! Whose idea was it to cook the dinner?’

The largest orc, who was (it need hardly be said) the band’s leader, pointed silently at one of the smaller orcs. Marukka advanced, drawing her sword. The small orc backed away.

‘I didn’t! It wasn’t my idea! I wasn’t even here—urp!’

Marukka’s jagged blade whistled through the air. There was a whup! and something relatively round bounced and landed at Barashkukor’s feet, still blinking. The orc-band scrambled to their feet with enthusiasm.

‘We got a ball,’ Marukka announced. ‘Let’s play!’

A voice through his nightmare said:

‘What’s that smell?’

Will Brandiman moved his head fractionally and winced. A blaze of pain subsided. It was no nightmare. He tested his wrists and found them cord-bound. His lock-picks, by the feel of it, were still sewn into his cuffs. His ankles throbbed, tied much too tightly.

‘Roasting pony?’ he guessed thickly.

‘One day you’re going to wake up to the smell of roasting brother,’ Ned grumbled.

The ground was hard and damp under his face. Will strained to lift his head. The brilliant moon blazed in his eyes, and he flinched. There was no locating the source of the pain as yet, but he had a small bet that it would be a head wound, and an unprofessional one at that.

‘Orcs,’ he concluded, sniffing.

A bare foot, hard as the hardest leather boot, kicked him in the ribs. The force of the blow threw him over on to his back. He stared up at a broad-shouldered, squat-legged orc in shining black plate harness. The orc opened its tusked mouth and spat accurately into Will’s eye. The saliva stung.

‘Orcs,’ Will marvelled. ‘Well, you can’t be that stupid. You managed to surprise me and my brother, and that isn’t often done – ahh!’

A slightly smaller orc leaned over Will’s face from behind him, and shoved the muzzle of its hound-faced bassinet helmet open. The fanged and tilt-eyed face was upside-down from Will’s point of view and (he thought) none the better for it. The orc gave a light contralto growl. ‘Show respect! Do not speak before Ashnak!’

Will managed to roll himself up into a precarious sitting position. Ned, a bundle of rope, lay a few feet away. A fire burned. The shelter of branches and bracken that had concealed this dip in the ground and the cave entrance were scattered about; the brass-bound chests were open and their contents looted. One of the heavy crossbows hung at the belt of the armoured orc. Will raised one eyebrow in a rare respect.

‘Agaku,’ he guessed. ‘The Man-smart Agaku.’

The armoured orc smiled, showing polished yellow fangs. ‘I have not met many, Man or elf-filth or halfling, who are smart as the Agaku.’

Will managed to wipe his face against his knee, cleaning off the last of the acidic saliva. His eyes still ran, blurring the night sky, so that for a panic-stricken moment he was not sure how many orcs surrounded them.

Ned’s voice, thick with pain, said, ‘A scouting party, I’d guess, since there’s only two of them. Will—’

‘Yes, yes, I know. It’s difficult.’

A spark from the fire drifted through the air and lodged against his cheek, burning. He shook his head violently, and then groaned. The fire had been set in the cave-mouth, not visible from the moorland above, and the charred carcass of the pony appeared to have been extensively chewed.

‘You’re getting rid of the evidence,’ he marvelled, looking up at the larger orc. ‘Ashnak, was it, that she called you? Master Ashnak, you and I must talk. I’d find it more convenient if you cut at least my ankles free, since I think that if you don’t, I’ll lose the use of my feet.’

The ground swooped dizzyingly away as a clawed hand grabbed the back of his doublet and swung him up into the air. The female orc’s helmeted face grinned into his from a distance of six inches. Her tusks were long, curved, and capped with bronze. Her whiteless eyes gleamed. She hefted a spiked morningstar in her free hand.

‘You little halflings, always so tricksy,’ she said, in guttural admiration. ‘Mark me, Ashnak. They’re on some quest for the Light. If we heed their pleas and free ’em, they’ll have some miracle later on, and bring us down in our pride. I’ve heard Man-tales. I know how it goes.’

The spiked pole swung up, poised, swung down—

‘Not without my orders, Shazgurim!’ The large orc wrenched the morningstar away and belted the other orc with the smooth end, sending her crashing against the earth-wall of the dip in the ground. Will tried his best for a tuck-and-roll fall — being tucked reasonably well already by his bonds — but a sharp rock caught him in the gut, and it was a minute and more before he dragged enough air into his lungs to breathe.

He heard Ned say, very reasonably, ‘A bargain – our equipment, which you can use, for our lives, which you have no use for.’

An owl hooted twice, and then hooted twice again. The owl is not necessarily a moorland bird. Moving almost as silently as halflings, two more armoured orcs slid around the tor and over the side of the dip and brandished their war-axes in salute to Ashnak. Will groaned as he rolled over, the cords at his ankles cutting into him like wire.

‘They’re alone,’ one of the orcs grunted. ‘No smell of strangers: Men or wizard-filth or squat dwarves.’

The smallest orc, which in the flickering firelight Will thought might be another female, gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘No smell of magic, no. None. None!’

He saw Ashnak open his fanged mouth, knew that the orc’s next words would be Kill them! and played his last card. Fortunately, as usual, it was a fifth ace.

‘Hold your hand!’ he cried. ‘In the name of the nameless necromancer!’

Ned, at his side, made a noise that might have been a groan or a whimper. ‘“In the name of the nameless”?’

‘You know what I mean. In the … Oh, the hell with it. Orcs!’ Will exclaimed, loudly. ‘Strong though you are, I know your kind fear magic. Do you really wish to risk offending the nameless necromancer?’

The big orc motioned with his hand. The two scout orcs vanished up on to the moorland again. Shazgurim stood, rebuckling the plate armour on her forearms, and scowled at Ashnak’s back. Will noted it. As Ashnak approached, he flicked the hair back out of his eyes and gazed as fearlessly as he could at the orc.

‘Hhrmmm …’ The orc squatted down. In the firelight Will could just make out the clan tattoos on his horny cheeks. Polearms slung across his back, black armour thigh- and arm-defences, engraved breastplate – this is no orc bandit, Will thought. He assumed a dignified confidence.

‘And just why’, the orc growled, ‘would it offend my master the nameless to slice your skins from your bodies, and cook them, and feed them back to you, before we leave you impaled by your arses on our spears for the ravens to rip at?’

‘You have a wonderful turn of phrase.’ Will paused. ‘Your master?’

‘Yes, little coney. My master. Whose name you have made filthy in your halfling mouth, so perhaps I will feed you live coals after I feed you your skin.’

Ned Brandiman groaned.

‘Bloody hell, Will! We’re not even at the Grey Crag. We’re not inside twenty miles of