Free Ascendance by John Birmingham Page B

Threshrend Majorae had just disappeared, ‘tells me the Dave is still scratching his nuts around midtown. We’re gonna keep him there, maybe even kill him, for bonus points.’
    They returned to the great chamber where the Lieutenants Grymm awaited them, a cohort strong, drawn up in armour and weapons, a band of Sliveen scouts attached this time, again at the insistence of Compt’n ur Threshrend who would have them maintain a screen around the lord commander’s party.
    And who was Guyuk to quibble with such sound tactical advice? Sliveen would deploy with them. Not the Diwan’s Finest, of course. They were still engaged in a greater mission. But the scouts waiting in the chamber with Lieutenants Grymm and a Master of the Ways were old and experienced veterans of a hundred encounters with foe like the Djinn and Morphum. They would serve well.
    The chamber was a vast rock-ribbed space with vaulted ceilings, stained black by volcanic smoke, which drifted up from rents in the stony ground. Dark mouths yawned open all around the cavern walls, leading away to other chambers, to regimental barracks and training plains, down to the dungeons, up to the palace and out to the marches and salients of the other clans ur Horde. The strongholds of the Horde were vast indeed, greatest of all the contending sects in the UnderRealms. And yet . . .
    The lord commander held his thoughts close, lest the heresy undo him. There was no denying the vast scale of the human settlements he had seen, both through the visions of the Diwan, and with his own eyes on the island stronghold of Manhatt’n. Where once he would have ventured forth trusting to the power and prowess of his elite guard, he could not now find that confidence which attended his ascent through the ranks of the Regiments Grymm. Lord Guyuk knew that, just as any normal human who encountered one of his warriors must surely be slain, his entire guard detail might not survive an encounter with one of the war bands of the upstart cattle.
    As he donned greaves and plate and, this time, hefted his honourably scarred and battered shield, the lord commander could not help but feel some measure of anxiety. Not for himself, for he had long ago accepted his own death in battle as the inevitable consequence of walking the one true path, but for the Horde as a whole and, if he were honest, for all daemonum. Unlike most of his kind he had been afforded an opportunity to study the ways of modern man. The little unnamed thresh, now raised to the rank of Threshrend Superiorae, had provided Guyuk with ample opportunities to ponder the changed nature of these creatures. The lord commander could clearly discern in humanity not just the brute savagery of a Hunn dominant in frenzy, but more worrying, much more worrying, the reserved and guileful warcraft of the Grymm. These creatures, this livestock raised so far above its place, would not simply fight battles of resistance, or even of conquest and subjugation. They would make war of a scale and intent to annihilate everything they deemed dar ienamic .
    Standing next to the lord commander, Compt’n ur Threshrend did not bother to armour himself.
    ‘You carry no shield, I note, Superiorae,’ said Guyuk. ‘You don no mail, while warriors with honour to shame you clad themselves as though for the last great battle.’
    ‘Meh,’ the Superiorae shrugged. ‘Chain mail chafes like a bitch and it won’t even stop vanilla-flavoured 5.56 millimetre. And fuck armour-piercing or tracer fire or fucking HE rounds. I played a lot of fucking COD , man, I know this shit. Best defence is being somewhere else.’
    Guyuk was sorry he’d mentioned it.
    A Lieutenant Grymm stepped up, smashing a mailed fist against the iron plate and boiled grosswyrm leather protecting his upper body.
    ‘My Lord,’ he roared, as though making up for the stealth and quiet discipline they would have to practise in the Above, ‘if it please you, the Master of the Ways pronounces the