Free Resistance by John Birmingham

not be able to present Her Majesty with any usable intelligence, but at least he might seek her indulgence if he was able to present a fine repast. It was more than that idiot Scaroth had been able to do after all.
    Two full Talon of Hunn he had taken with him through the breach to the Above, with four Lieutenants Grymm and a clutch of Sliveen scouts into the bargain. And with what had he returned?
    Nothing.
    Indeed he had not returned at all.
    Only the broken, humiliated remnants of his thrall had escaped with their worthless hides intact. BattleMaster Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn, it seemed from the survivors’ tales, had led his so-called Vengeance party into a human trap, where Scaroth himself had been challenged and humiliated by a champion.
    The so-called Dave.
    A human champion? Guyuk had trouble accepting the absurd myth, but he was Grymm and accepting hard truths was his reason to be.
    He flicked the cooling stew from his talon and hawked a mouthful of acid into the nearest pit, where he heard it land with a satisfying splat and sizzle, followed by a terrified squeal of pain. He had not lost his appetite, but his determination not to be diverted by it was redoubled. The Hunn were fools. But that was less explanation than description. All Grymm knew the truth of it, from the newest hatchling to the old lord himself. Hunn charged into situations where finesse and nuance or even restraint should have been the watchword. They never prepared, apart from loading themselves down with mountainous piles of edged metal and thinning their own ranks with ridiculous Shurakh contests before they even took the field.
    Just thinking on the dull-witted brutes and the iniquity of the high station they presumed in Her Majesty’s regard was enough to turn his already foul mood into a dangerous, seething chancre of impacted rage.
    ‘Inquisitor!’ he roared. ‘Have up another prisoner. And have a bit more care about it this time. The blood pots are full. We don’t need more ingredients, we need answers.’
    The Captain Inquisitor on duty grunted and mumbled and shuffled toward the edge of the nearest holding pit, peering over as he snarled and worried at the problem of how to extract one of the prisoners without killing it. Guyuk consoled himself with a lesson in patience. A stupid Hunn would probably have just harpooned another calfling and stood there scratching its nuts in confusion as the poor dead thing refused to yield any useful information. The human cows really had proven themselves to be fragile creatures, even more so than the old scrolls had implied. A goodly number of them had actually died in the process of simply being transported here. They were not even mistreated to any notable extent. Guyuk himself had insisted upon that cautionary measure. It was known the creatures became deranged with fear if handled too harshly, and indeed, it was considered great sport to do so under the right circumstances. But these were not the right circumstances. Even so, in spite of his instructions, it appeared one third of the number taken had simply passed away from fright.
    He sighed in vexation.
    The Diwan Sliveen’s scouts had brought back three score captives from the Above. Not just from the unobserved fringes of the engagement between Scaroth’s forces and the human host led by the Dave, but from sorties Guyuk had dispatched in great stealth as soon as it was known the breach to the Above was open. It had been eons, of course, since any from the UnderRealms had sallied up into the Above, and much had been forgotten about the lands of men, but the Grymm lord was satisfied that he had cast his net as wide as fortune would allow and hauled in such a catch as would enable him to judge the disposition of the human forces.
    He snorted in disbelief at that.
    Human forces. It was an affront to any right-thinking daemon to even say those words one after the other. And yet . . . The reports he had seen from Scaroth’s remnants – reports