Grunts by Mary Gentle Read Free Book Online Page A

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 mouthfulof 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.
    The ox-cart trundled on down roads that became steadily better-paved as they came closer to the city of Sarderis.
    Will Brandiman bit into the chicken and ripped a wing free. He answered himself thickly, “Yes. It’s worth it. Not our payment—our
revenge
. What was it you overheard, brother? The nameless has a sister who is called The Named and who wears the armour of Light? I think we should find her, offer our services, and betray what we know to her.”
    The vulture lets the wind feather its wings, rising on a hot thermal. The mountains lie below it like wrinkled grey flesh. Its central vision focuses on the parasites that crawl on that skin. A numerous hive of them, cupped in the fort’s stone claws…
    Pickings are good now. The tough-hided beasts are cast out from the walls, bloodied and sometimes dead, in increasingnumbers. True, it is commonly the little or the sick ones. And, true, there is a surprising lack of pickable rubbish in the compound.
    It wheels, wings