Grunts (5 page)

The nameless necromancer shaded wide-pupilled green eyes with his hand. He glanced up, painfully, and made a magic sign with long, pale fingers. The shaft of light dimmed somewhat.

“What news for me, Ashnak, other than that you are arrived in the mountains?”

Ashnak rumbled, clearing his throat. “I allowed myself to be taken, for a short time, by the cursed horse-riders, and during this time I met one who is called The Named.”

A glacial amusement leaked into the cavern.

“So you have met my sister. That is well. This concerns her also. Now attend well to what I say, Ashnak.”

Ashnak heard the background clink of bottle and glass.

“The dragon Dagurashibanipal is old, and her hoard collected from many strange places and times. I have reason to know that in that hoard there are strange and magical weapons. Hmm.” The voice took on a thoughtful tone. “Halfling bones…too fragile to be truly creative with…no, you need not bring me back the bodies, once you are done. You are to take the weapons to the fortress of Nin-Edin, put them into the hands of the warriors there, and lead them against Guthranc. There you are to kill or take my sister The Named, so that she shall not ride against our Master the Dark Lord on the Last Day. Am I going too fast for you, orc?”

“We are to fight?” Ashnak sprang to his feet, a light in his eyes. Joyously he shook and brandished his warhammer. “I am to lead a war-band! Master, I thank you!”

“Not so
loud
…There must be servants I might have, of more tact and delicacy than orcs—but there again, you have your uses. Hurry to do my bidding, Ashnak.”

The image on the cave-wall altered. Ashnak saw factories belching out smoke, the siege-engines of war, the companies marching in from every land to a Lord greater even than the nameless necromancer; the Horde of Darkness gathering and its numbers hiding the very earth beneath it.

“Soon,
soon
, we ride out to the Final Battle. But,” the soft voice said, “my sister The Named must not ride against us. See to it, Ashnak. And be aware that, should you die failing to achieve this, my punishments are not limited by your being dead.”

*    *    *

Will Brandiman walked back out of the carved stone tunnel-entrance, slipping between the silver-inlaid oaken doors. Its roof was only halfling-high. He brushed black char from the front of his doublet. A few curls of hair fell, crisped, to the rock floor.

“All right?”

“Fine.” Ned Brandiman, following, pulled the door to behind him and sheathed a substance-tipped stiletto. “Gets ’em every time. Right. Let’s see what we’ve got…”

Zarkingu, a new skull-ornamented standard-pole over her shoulder, sniffed the air with an ecstatic expression on her tusked face.

“Dragon-magic
dies
,” she announced.

The biggest orc rumbled something to Imhullu and Shazgurim, who hefted their jagged war-axes in the narrow cavern and flanked the group. Will held up a small hand.

“Better let us go first, Captain Ashnak. There’ll be booby-traps, or I don’t know dragons. Even dead dragons. Ned, bring out the detection equipment.”

The older halfling, avoiding Will’s eye, dug into the brass-bound chest and brought out a wire-spring-and-glass contraption. It might even
be
a trap-detector, Will thought, for all I know. He took it with nerve-twitching care between his two hands and studied it with deliberation.

Ned rattled his fingers absently on the chest.

—
I’ll do the checking for real traps, brother. You just convince them that we’re indispensable because we can work that thing. Whatever it is
.

Will took a deep breath and turned back to the carved tunnel-entrance. Ned pushed the doors open. A breeze blew out, heavy with the spice-scents of decaying magic. In the light of Ned’s torch, and with the uncannily silent footsteps of four crouching Agaku behind him, he walked down the short tunnel and out into the great cave.

“Dark Lord’s prick!” Ashnak swore, straightening up.

Blue light blazed into Will’s eyes, brighter now as the great dragon died. He heard the other orcs exclaim behind him.

Dagurashibanipal’s spiky body lay, a glass mountain, in the centre of the cathedral-sized cavern. He stared at the crystal length of her, camouflage-coloured to the vast heap of silver and adamant upon which she sprawled. Even dead,
she towered high as fortress walls. The unnatural yellow light died in the slits of her horn-lidded eyes.

One wing twitched.

Horn and bone slid together under torchlight. Metal sinews stretched, gears and cogs whirred, and Dagurashibanipal’s one prosthetic wing unfurled in a last mechanical reflex. It reared up into the cavern’s heights; curled, split, ribboned, shredded; then fell like a collapsing ship’s sail.

“Golem…” Will, eyes wide, stared at flesh and blood, at wire and canvas, and neither moved again. The poisoned dragon’s diamantine corpse stilled. He began a slow circling of the cavern wall beside Ned, paying a deliberate attention to the wire-and-spring device in his hands.

Ned muttered under his breath, “It’s only another dragon. Dammit. It’s only another dragon…”

Ashnak of the Agaku marched across to the hoard, kicking silver crowns and diamonds contemptuously aside. “This isn’t what we came to find! Are you sure this is the right dragon?”

Will, soberly, said, “There is—was—only one Dagurashibanipal, and that is she.
Look out!
”

Ashnak threw himself flat on the stone floor.

“Elfshit!” A claw ripped Imhullu’s face and the squat orc swore, ignored the blood streaming from his eye-socket, and swung the great jagged poleaxe in both hands. Something clashed, impacting against the stone wall. “Agaku!
Agaku!
”

Wings hissed through the blue air. Chittering, their metallic claws outstretched, a flock of tiny dragonet-golem fell from where they roosted in the cavern’s ceiling.

“Agaku!” Shazgurim yelled cheerfully, bassinet’s hound-visor down, swinging her axe in a figure-eight blur. Gear-cogs and glass eyes sprayed away from her.

“Last magic! Last magic!” The smaller female orc waved her hands in the air, attempting to snatch one of the dragonet-golem in flight. Ashnak straight-armed her into the wall, face-forwards, spat on his horny hands, and battered the last of the flying machinelets into crumpled horn and hawser.

“Well warned!” he chuckled throatily. “Good exercise for the Agaku, master halfling. Is there more?”

Will shook his head dumbly.

“Here!”
Zarkingu hopped from foot to horny foot, wiping the blood from her battered features. “Ashnak! Here!”

Will carried the glass-and-wire device carefully over to the entrance of a side-cavern, hands still shaking. “Madam Zarkingu, best be wary. Let the experts check it out first. Ned, what do you think?”

“Mmm…could be fine…”

“But what
is
it?”

A vast tunnel stretched out before them, lit by the blue light of dying magic. The sides had been squared off, giving a flat floor and ceiling, and the walls and floor were, for as far as Will could see, lined with metal shelving.

He stared down the ranks of metal shelves. There were stacks of clothing of an odd colour and cut, metal-and-wire devices, chunks of solid but obviously forged metal—and all this piled high out of sight.

Beyond this first one, similar chambers stretched off into the underground distance.

“Different magic…” Zarkingu whimpered. “But not here—not
these
.”

“What’s this?” The big orc, Ashnak, pushed past her into the first chamber, seizing a big chunk of metal with what looked like a crossbow grip and trigger at one end. He pulled the trigger.

Foom!

“Arrrgggh!” Imhullu roared. Fire and shrapnel ricocheted off the tunnel wall behind him, pitted now with a line of two-inch-deep cavities. The squat orc grabbed at the severed tops of his long, hairless ears.

“Yaayy-ahh!” Ashnak lifted the weapon and pulled the trigger again.

Dakka-dakka-dakka!

Will ducked. A furnace briefly opened beside the left side of his face. The stone floor hit him between the shoulder-blades. The wire-and-glass device went flying. An earsplitting sound cracked his skull. Stunned, he hitched himself up onto his elbows, yelling, deafened, “No!
Stop!
”

Flame seared across Will’s vision, bright as the sun at midday, jabbing from the weapon’s muzzle. An explosion shook the air. Splinters of diamond flew from the adamantine corpse of the dragon, ricocheting back from the vast cave-walls, whizzing past him with dull
whup!
sounds.

“Weapons!”

“Ashnak! Ashnak!”

“The nameless was right!”

“Fighting Agaku! Fighting Agaku!”

On knees and elbows, Will Brandiman worked his way rapidly back across the dry stone floor to where his brother lay under the bottom-most metal shelf nearest the entrance. The halfling’s doublet and trunk-hose were thick with dust. He lifted his head slightly as Will pushed in next to him. Orc feet ran past, forward and back, bringing out piles of the metal objects into the main cavern.

“Are those all weapons, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, Will. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

Horny feet pounded past and then plodded back. Shazgurim swore, dumping what sounded like half a ton of scrap metal in the main cavern.

“But what kind—sorcerous weapons?”

“Their magic-sniffer said not.”

The permanent temperature of the caves, chill but not freezing, began to sink into Will’s bones. He rested his head on his short arms, blocking out the blue-white light. “They’re probably going to kill us as soon as they remember we’re here.”

Ned whispered, “Can I bring three things to your attention, brother? One: as far as we could make out, Dagurashibanipal sealed up every entrance to this place, apart from that one rat-hole. Two: outside in the chests there is a small amount of the dwarven-rock-blasting powder.”

Will lifted his head from his arms. “Enough to bring a reasonable chunk of the roof down in that tunnel…What’s the third thing?”

“And three,” the elder halfling said quietly, “the mad one just said
different magic
. I don’t believe a dragon as old as Dagurashibanipal would leave this place without a curse on it. And my guess is that it’s probably one that operates better the longer one is actually kept near the hoard.”

“Mmmm…Yes. Let’s
go
.”

Sneaking out, keeping in the odd shadows that dying magic casts, Will hugged the cavern wall, edging round towards the tunnel. He passed close by Shazgurim as she lifted a thick metal stick with two stems projecting downwards, one short and straight, the other curved. She pulled the crossbow-type trigger.

Dukka-dukka-dukka-dukka-Foom!

The blacksmith-foundry noise ripped at Will’s ears and
stomach. He ducked down into shadow. Hot metal sprayed the opposite walls, splinters of stone filled the cavern, and the orcs cheered. Shazgurim threw the weapon down and seized another, which seemed to require the loading of a metal canister into the muzzle.

Will, sneaking past the first abandoned weapon, noted the sigils
7.62 AVTOMAT KALASHNIKOV OBRAZETS 1947G
imprinted in the metal.

Barashkukor dozed in the warm sun, and woke when his helmet fell over his eyes.

He grunted and snarled. “Marukka, go away!”

Another rock bounced off the parapet wall. This one hit his poleaxe, which he had propped against the crenellations. The weapon slid down with a crash. Barashkukor picked it up, scratching between his long, hairless ears.

“Barashkukor!” The black orc Kusaritku bawled from further down the wall. “What’s all the bleedin’ noise about?”

Barashkukor leaned over the parapet.

Thirty feet below, on the foot-trampled earth outside Nin-Edin’s main gate, two halflings stood looking up at him. Each wore doublet and trunk-hose, very ripped and travel-stained. The halfling with curly black hair wore black and grey garments and a blackened mail-shirt, and he had a short-sword buckled to his side. The brown-haired halfling had a heavy crossbow slung across his back, a mailcoat, and stood with a foot up on one of a pair of heavy, brass-bound chests.

Barashkukor stared down at their foreshortened figures, his jaw gaping.

The curly-haired halfling shouted, “Open! Open in the name of the nameless!”

Forty-three miles away, as sunrise touches the towers of Sarderis, The Named suddenly wakes from sleep with an expression that makes her pale features shocking in their ugliness.

Barashkukor stared down the pass again, between the massive raw-ochre slopes of the mountains. A small plume of dust rose from the road.

“
That’s
not our escort…” He slitted his eyes against the
sunlight blasting back from the dry earth. “Marukka! You’re not going to believe this, Marukka…”

The female orc leaned her hairy elbows in the gap in the crenellations. “What am I not going to…Hey! Those aren’t the warriors we sent out as the halflings’ escort. Dark Lord’s arse!
More
travellers? I don’t believe it. Turn out the guard!”