Ascendance by John Birmingham Read Free Book Online

weapons. The strange noise of the beastless chariots. The alien miasma of smells. It was all so outlandish as to be incomprehensible.
    Still, until a moment ago the empath had been very pleased with himself. Only the arrival of the human champion –nowhere nearby that Guyuk could see – had interrupted dar Threshrend’s constant babble about the brilliance of his scheme, and how well it was working.
    ‘My Lord?’ the Captain of the Guard asked again.
    ‘Gather as much of the plunder as we can take,’ said Guyuk, turning from the cold light of the human towers and walking deeper into the darkness of the woods. ‘Dar Threshrend has apparently seen enough and we are to withdraw.’
    ‘As you will it, my Lord, so shall it be.’

    Guyuk saw the Captain Grymm check himself, inclining his head and going down on one knee instead of smashing a full salute into his armoured chest with a mailed fist; another order from Compt’n ur Threshrend, who insisted that stealth be their watchword in the human realm. The half Talon of Lieutenants and Sergeants Grymm gathered up the catch in the nets, suspended it between long poles and carried it back to the portal. The calflings were all dead, an unfortunate necessity given how noisy they tended to be when captured. The flesh would not now be as sweet and toothsome, and of course the bloodwine had already cooled and spoiled in the vein. But Lord Guyuk ur Grymm snorted at his own fussiness in even thinking of such things. It was not so long ago, just a few turnings of night and accursed day here in the Above, that the very idea of dining on man-meat, fresh or otherwise, would have been ridiculous. He would not bother the palace kitchens with anything but the freshest kill. Nonetheless the regimental mess would make good use of all they took back.
    Surrounded by his guard, he threaded through the forest, avoiding the stone paths and cleared fields where they might be seen by human eyes. The idea of hiding from the calflings would also once have been ridiculous. More than that. It was heresy. Anathema. And he knew that even his Marshals Regimental were troubled by the idea. But the Threshrend insisted, and so Guyuk ordered, and because he was the lord commander, the most successful of Her Majesty’s Lords Commander in a good long eon, the marshals complied. Or agreed to, anyway. Neither they nor their main formations were even deployed. The chaos he thought he could discern in the city, the noises to which Compt’n ur Threshrend had bade him attend, testified to the success of their plan which, for now, did not rely on main-force Grymm or even Hunn elements.
    No, this city was tonight taken under siege by mostly untried, untested, unnamed Hunn. Hundreds of them, nearly half a legion in all, seemingly scattered at random across the city’s boroughs. Lord Guyuk had been sceptical, Marshals Guyur, Sepcis and Khutr positively outraged. But Compt’n ur Threshrend had explained his plan in such a way as to convince them all. He had done so in the infuriating argot of his polyglot minds, but eating the cranial meats of the human Scolari Compton, and the elite warriors captured with him, had blessed the Threshrend with an unusual clarity for tactical and even strategic reasoning.
    Even if it was expressed in the bizarre tongue of the calfling known as Trev’r ur Candly.
    If and when we repeat this experiment of harvesting individuals from the human Horde for their thinkings, Guyuk thought as they pushed through the thin forest, we will take much greater care with the minds we have our empaths consume, especially as the first one taken imprints itself so profoundly.
    ‘Hurry up, motherfuckers!’ came a shout from ahead. ‘Threshy wants out of here.’
    *
    The empath daemon once known only as thresh, as were all thresh, and now elevated to the high rank of Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm, Pro-Consul to the Lord Commander, bounced from one horned foot to another, his escape through the