Grunts Read Online Free PDF Page A

added in fingerspeech:
    —
We don’t have long. Four or five days, maximum. And thanks to these knuckleheads, we’re severely underequipped
.
    —
Courage, brother. We won’t need long. But let’s not tell them that
.
    “I wonder if it’s dark or daylight?” Will played a deuce he had not been dealt. “It feels like afternoon. We’ll have to do some scouting of our own soon.”
    A scuffle in the passage attracted his attention. Zarkingu lurched upright. The candle sent her spiked shadow dancing in a sudden draught.
    “Who goes there?”
    “I, Ashnak.” The big orc shambled into the cavern. Four fresh heads dripped from his belt, hung by the hair. He threw down the other male orc, unconscious, laughing deep in his chest. “I found Imhullu unsuspecting—wake up, fool!”
    Will huddled unobtrusively into his cloak. The big orc unsnapped the whip from his belt and welted Imhullu across the back and legs until the other orc stirred, muttered something thickly, and then prostrated himself in front of Ashnak, banging his head on the cave-floor.
    “Captain!”
    “I’ll
captain
you, you miserable gut-rotted offspring of an elf!” Ashnak threw the severed Man-heads to Zarkingu, who cradled them. He strode over the prostrate Imhullu, towards the halflings. Will got to his feet, dusting himself down, and met the orc’s glare with a civil smile.
    “Captain Ashnak. We were afraid you wouldn’t be rejoining us. No trouble, I hope?”
    At the passage mouth, Zarkingu whispered, “I smell magic, much-magic, stinking magic, magic of Light…”
    Ashnak coughed gutturally. He reached down and picked Will up by the front of his doublet, nails digging in through heavy wool and mail-shirt to cringing flesh. “Now we are in these unchancy mountains, halfling, you tell me—what are you here for?”
    The mail-shirt, riding up under his arms, pinched Will’s skin painfully. He wriggled. Ned Brandiman stood up and tapped the orc’s arm, as high as the halfling could reach.
    “We’re here for the usual,” Ned said. “To steal a hoard from a dragon.

3

    The air had morning’s clarity in the mountains. Barashkukor looked up at the immensity of the rock—the great range of bare crags that ended, to east and west above him, in rockwalls almost vertical. Mountain stone gleamed grey, silver, ochre, and gold in the dawn light. He bared small fangs and snarled at the grandeur.
    He shuffled down the parapet above the gate-house, sorting out the straps of his helmet and plated brigandine as he went.
    In this sole gap in the mountain range, the isolated crag of Nin-Edin rose up cliff-sided, and the small road through the pass ran around the foot of it, under the walls of its ancient fort.
    Barashkukor averted his gaze. He scratched at his balls, missing the sleeping warmth of the fifty bodies in his own orc-nest. He spared a glance back across the ruined motte and bailey of Nin-Edin—the bloody wreckage of the previous day’s Orcball tournament; several dozen orcs around the thinly smoking night’s firepits, sorting out the hunt and rutting in the open air.
    “Here, Barashkukor.”
    “Thanks, Kusaritku.” He took the wriggling rock-vole the black orc offered, knocked its brains out against his heel, and swallowed it in two gulps without chewing. “What news of the night?”
    “Silent as a throat-slit elf.” Kusaritku passed a small bottle of black spirit.
    The air had an unwelcome chill. Barashkukor drank. “Who’s the day-watch?”
    “Duranki, Tukurash, Ekurzida. I’ll rouse ’em.” The black orc grinned. “Trust me!”
    Barashkukor shambled further down the parapet, staringdown the long valley of the pass while he pissed a steaming black jet off the wall.
    A voice close at hand shouted. “—and
I
say he will reach it!”
    “Never!” Marukka’s baritone bellow.
    “You arse-licking elf-lover, he
will
!”
    Barashkukor started, dribbling piss down his leg. Hastily he stuffed himself back in his ripped breeches