Ascendance (15 page)

At that moment, the Superiorae turned away from the calfling adepts and fairly skipped back into the lord commander’s presence.

‘Oh man,’ he said. ‘This is gonna be awesome.’

‘I await the awe, Threshrend.’


‘Oh, I’m bringin’ it. Be cool on that, Super G. Threshy is bringin’ the awesome. And the intern. Here’s how it’s going down. My lady friend there, Polly . . .’

‘The female calfling?’

‘Yep. She don’t look like much. She’s no Kardashian. But man, she’s Lara fucking Croft when it counts. She’s willing to come back down with us, do the edit on her lappy, and come back in return for us letting the others go.’

‘She makes this demand of us? Of me?’ growled Guyuk.

‘Dude, no way. Not a demand. An offer. A trade. It’s like I said,
mein Führer
. We gots to put some money in the favour bank, build up our trust deposits, right? So we can take it out and spend the motherfucker when we need it. You follow?’

‘No.’

No, Lord Guyuk ur Grymm did not follow. Who was this unarmed calfling breeder to be making demands of him?

The Threshrend actually raked its claws down its face in frustration.

‘Look! We were always going to let the cattle go. It’s part of the plan. The sneaky fucking plan. And having this Polly chick pimp out my bit? Also part of the plan. And if we take her back down, give her a peek at just how much fucking pain we gots to lay on these motherfuckers, then that can totes be part of the plan too.’

The Threshrend crouched as he drew closer to Lord Guyuk, although he seemed less worried about being decapitated by the supreme commander of the Grymm – a genuine possibility – than he was by the prospect of being spotted by the human’s iron Drakon.

‘Just work with me here,
jefe
. Can we, like, put on a parade or something? Throw a couple of Hunn legions onto a training field, even though they don’t, you know, train or anything? But we kit them up, balls out, and my intern here – that’s like a slave, if it helps you come at the idea – my slave relays visions of the awesome fucking power of a fully operational Death Star back to the meat sacks.’

‘This Death Star . . .?’

‘Sorry, poetic license. What I’m asking, big guy, is for a simple May Day parade. Couple of Hunn regiments maybe. We can loop the footage if you want. Scare the shit out of the cows. We tell ’em that’s what coming next time. Into their fucking cities. Right inside their bedrooms. Whole legions, whole fucking regiments of the Grande Horde. Not just a couple of pissant war bands of unnamed pussy Hunn. They will lose their fucking shit. Not all of them. But enough. Enough to start begging for mercy, suing for terms and shit. It will fuck them up. Right now they’re united. You gimme this, and I’ll crack them like a rotten egg. Come on, do it for Threshy. Do it for the Horde. Get on board for the big win. You know Her Majestic Awesomeness likes results.’

There was no denying that, of course. She of the Horde did indeed preference victorious results. Guyuk considered the plan. As he understood it, through Compt’n ur Threshrend’s impenetrable babbling, the Superiorae intended to further his exploitation of this calfling breeder to undermine the cattle’s solidarity. It was not far removed from the traditional role of Threshrendum, he supposed. Unable to serve in honourable combat, they schemed and connived at disrupting the foe, thieving their resolve, diminishing their warrior spirit through empathic subversion. He could not claim to fully understand what Compt’n ur Threshrend was about, not in the minutiae of tactical details. But he did understand the strategic importance of sowing discord and spreading an exemplary terror amongst the cattle.

‘I concur,’ he said at last, turning to the senior Lieutenant Grymm. ‘Release the captives. Send them on their way with ransom for safe passage from all of our host who would assail them.’

‘Except for the intern,’ said Compt’n ur Threshrend. ‘She comes with us.’

15

I
t was almost like a date, except he was a razor-toothed Hell daemon intent on enslaving all mankind, and she was his captive. Actually, that wasn’t so far removed from some of the memories Compt’n ur Threshrend had consumed when he sucked Professor Raymond Compton’s brains right out of his melon. That had to be why he found himself . . . well . . . nervous as he escorted Polly Farrell to the reviewing platform which afforded such sweeping views across the training plains of the Regiments Select of Her Majesty’s Grymm.

The area was smaller than the training ranges used by the mainline formations of legions and Regiments Grymm, and indeed the forces wheeling and manoeuvring below them were not the three Select, but merely standard units of Grymm. Still, they looked hella impressive stomping about down there under a lowering sky the colour of bad blood and old bruises.

And they were a hell of a lot more impressive than any rabble of Hunn old Guyuk could have dialled up at short notice. Even base legions of Grymm practised and drilled manoeuvre warfare to a much higher standard than their more numerous Hunn allies. A Hunn’s idea of manoeuvre was a bellowing charge with jaws agape on the off chance something
might fall into their cakehole and make a convenient meal of itself.

‘So these bad motherfuckers you see down here, that’s the Grymm,’ said Threshy, trying not to sound as though he was striving hard to impress her, even though that’s totally what he was doing.

Even though that’s totally what he was
supposed
to do, what he’d promised Guyuk he’d do, because that was part of the plan.

It wasn’t like he was trying to impress her because he had a little monster boner for this tweedy chick who put him in mind of Fred from
Angel
.

Professor Compton had had a thing for Fred from
Angel
. And when she’d turned into Illyria? Oh man . . .

Threshy could not help but wonder what Polly Farrell would look like in skin-tight blue leathers and big hair.

Gah! Focus, Threshy, focus!

What she looked like right now was a slightly nervous nerd, but Threshy was certain her nerves, such as they were, could be put down to being exiled, even if temporarily, to the UnderRealms, where everything wanted to eat her. He was pretty certain she didn’t have first-date nerves.

‘Where did you learn to speak English?’ she asked, her voice quavering just a little in spite of her best efforts to keep it steady.

‘Off TV. Comcast runs cable to Hell. I mean, you have to deal with Comcast, which is its own kind of Hell. But, anyway, those regiments down there, that’s like better than 30,000 daemon warriors, all of them trained like super samurai but with the strength of King Kong. Or maybe, I dunno, the Hulk. And that’s just a sneak peek at some of the Regiments Grymm. Man, the Hunn are bigger and meaner . . .’

And all of them as dumb as a sack of fucking war hammers
.

‘And then you got your Gnarrl, who are like army engineers, and your Sliveen, your Threshrend of course, and your Fangr. You got 100,000 Hunn coming at you, it means you really got all of them
and
about 300,000 or 400,000 leashed Fangr too. Can you see why you guys are like doomed, if you don’t make friends with the Horde?’

‘But you want to eat us!’ she protested.

‘No way,’ Threshy said. ‘Not even.’

‘But I saw you. I saw
you
, Threshrend. You ate that poor man before. Back in the city.’

‘Oh, let’s not bicker and argue about who ate who,’ Threshy said, trying to sketch a boyish grin. Trevor Candly had been convinced his boyish grin could get him out of any trouble.

Polly shrank back and Threshy remembered that his fang tracks might make Trevor Candly’s boyish grin look a little grotesque. She didn’t run screaming, but that was because he had a Threshrend Majorae nearby, suppressing her fear reflex, amplifying the unusual reserves of courage he had first detected in her back in Manhattan. That was why she was only a little anxious, instead of batshit cray-cray with fear. He could have done all that himself, of course. He wasn’t a complete noob at the empath game. But Compt’n ur Threshrend wanted to stay focused, and he didn’t need to be distracted by a lot of psychic busywork like keeping Polly Farrell from falling to pieces.

He was already distracted enough by imagining Polly Farrell wrapped in a tight, electric-blue leather jumpsuit.

Fuck. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t be having these feelings.

‘So, have you, er, you know, got enough recorded?’

Polly seemed to remember the smart phone she was holding.

‘Oh. Yes. I have. Thank you. I should probably just do my editing now though.’

‘You sure you wouldn’t like to see the palace or anything? Or the Engineering Works? The Gnarrl got some kick-ass stuff over there, you know.’

He cursed himself inwardly as the words left him. He’d insisted the Gnarrl be kept well out of sight. A simple thresh, even a Hunn dominant, might be impressed by ironwood siege towers, or fleets of ballista, by the rolling fortresses armoured in Drakon-scale or the covered siege engines of the Horde’s engineering specialists. Polly would only see a lot of out-dated medieval bullshit; the sort of toys that boy scouts might lash together as a team-building exercise. None of it would put her in mind of the awesome power of a fully mobilised Grande Horde.

‘No, that’s okay, Threshrend,’ she said. ‘Really, I should be getting back to your library. You said all I had to do was cut together my report and I could go.’

Compt’n ur Threshrend’s forest of eyestalks all drooped at once, but he pulled himself together. This was crazy. She was his captive, possibly his dinner. Not some fucking Tinder date.

She was part of the plan. And she was sticking to her part of that plan, even as he tried to distract her with offers of a trip to the Drakon rendering pits, or a promise to get her a ringside seat at a Shurakh contest in the Hunn barracks.

Might as well just throw her into the blood pots, you idiot.

‘The library, yeah, okay, I suppose we should get back to the library.’

‘People will be getting worried,’ Polly said.

Threshy had to stifle a snort of nervous laughter, even as part of him couldn’t help but admire this chick’s fucking moxie. It wasn’t all down to the Threshrend Majorae topping up her natural reserves of courage. Threshy’s own radar told him Fred had a cast-iron pair of Hunn nuts on her.

Polly! Her name is Polly and she is not wearing a spanky blue leather catsuit that I want to peel off her delicious little bod with my fang tracks.

Peeps had a lot more to worry about than Polly running a little late. The Horde was going to eat their world, and Threshy had the carving knife.

‘Okay. You’re right. We’ll book it back to the library. Ha. See what I did there?’

She sketched a perfunctory smile, more of a facial twitch, really. And he died a thousand little deaths inside.

You fucking idiot, Compt’n, just shut the fuck up!

‘I just wanted to make sure you got all the vision you needed,’ he said weakly.

‘Thanks.’ She gave him a measured look. ‘You seem to know a lot. About TV production. For a monster, I mean.’

Threshy turned his back on the Regiments of Grymm which swarmed like black geometric storms over the vast bloodstone plains of the training grounds.

‘I understood TV production actually was full of monsters,’ he said and both his hearts soared as she let him have a genuine smile.

‘That’s funny,’ she said, without laughing.

She didn’t laugh, but she said I was funny. Fred said I was funny.

No, Illyria.

No!

Polly.

He let go of a ragged breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

‘Okay. Let’s go, Polly.’

He took a furtive pleasure in saying her name, but lost it as the pair of Lieutenants Grymm detailed to escort them and vouchsafe the calfling prisoner crashed their horned feet on the Drakon-glass flagstones of the reviewing platform. The Threshrend Majorae assigned to maintain Polly’s Zen cool was doing a hell of a job, because she didn’t flinch.

‘This way?’ she asked, indicating the nearest archway leading back into the main tower of the Grymm Lord’s Keep, from where Guyuk ur Grymm commanded Her Majesty’s most elite forces.

‘Yeah. Don’t get too far ahead of us.’

Threshy trailed after the young woman in a complete funk. He was starting to regret having the Threshrend – he couldn’t even remember the fucking thing’s name – chill her shit out. He was starting to think he might have preferred it if Polly Farrell was appropriately terrified and extravagantly grateful to old Threshy for keeping her safe from all the big bad monsters.

An image bubbled up out of all the human thoughts and memories he had consumed, gurgling to consciousness and breaking the surface like a fart in a poison mud bath.

Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hutt in her space bikini.

When he imagined himself as Jabba – not that fucking hard, really, – and Polly as Leia, Threshy felt a stirring in his loins. This was a new thing. He hadn’t even realised he had loins before. Physically, he was still very young, not long out of the nest. Normally, if he had survived into adulthood it would have been many years before he could even think about breeding. But now, apparently, he had loins. And the motherfuckers were stirring inside him.

What fresh Hell was this?
Those Scolari douche bags who’d made him eat that fucking moron Trevor and set him on this path hadn’t said anything about this shit.

‘Wait up, Polly,’ he called after her.

*

It had been an age since the lord commander had called upon the Archivum Scolari. It was not far removed from his quarters, being directly accessible from the Lord’s Keep by any one of five bridges which reached between the two towers. And it was not as though Guyuk shared the prejudice of the last lord commander against knowledge preserved upon stone tablets and within the bound volumes and bundled scrolls of grosswyrm vellum. Lord Traabal ur Grymm was famous for taking the heads of Scolari whose advice displeased him, roaring, ‘I think with my meat!’

And he did not lie. If he’d actually done a little less thinking with his meat he might have seen his loyal deputy Guyuk coming for him with a blade. Guyuk had struck at the lord commander, as was his right and duty, because the old fool was weakening, if not destroying, the Grymm with every Scolari master whose head he took. Furthermore, upon taking the commander’s chain for himself, the newly ennobled Lord Guyuk had it proclaimed amongst his thrall that he afforded the greatest urgency to binding up the wounds and filling out the ranks of the Scolari Grymm.

As the oldest of scrolls cautioned, in the knowing of things lies the mastery of them all. Or as Guyuk had ordered inscribed upon the redesigned livery of the Consilium, commissioned to mark the nightfall of a new era,
Knowing Things Is Useful
.

So it could not be said of his era that he turned away from knowledge. Only that he had not the time to pursue it as he might, given the burdensome duties of Her Majesty’s Lord Commander of Grymm. Those duties, onerous in the rare interregnums between wars against the lesser sects, were crushing indeed now he had the human Horde with which to contend as well. The latest from dar Diwan ur Sliveen both thrilled and appalled him as he stalked past long ranks of Praetorian Grymm guarding the passages of the keep. Each guard would crash out a salute as the lord commander drew level, smashing mailed fist into iron breastplate, creating the effect of a slow war drum. Spent seer-stone chips glowed malefic red to light his way as he brooded on the Diwan’s latest revelations; vast panoplies of battle had she laid out for him while Compt’n ur Threshrend tended to his schemes; slaughter on a scale to unsettle the scribes of even the most ancient war scrolls.

The Superiorae had sown an exemplary terror amongst the peoples of the American sect, and done so without spilling oceans of daemonum ichor across the Above. Or not the Horde’s ichor, to be more accurate. Many legions of the lesser sects had been lured into battle with the Americans, and in every instance they had been utterly destroyed.

Ay, but there was the rub of it.

For all of the success of Guyuk’s lures and entrapments of the Morphum and Djinn and the other bastard sects, for all the success of the Horde’s strange new stratagem Compt’n ur Threshrend called ‘insurgency’, the lord commander’s gall simmered at the inability of any daemonum force to engage the calflings in open battle.

We are the calflings, herded toward slaughter
, he grunted to himself as he crossed the lower viaduct to the Archivum and twinned ranks of Praetorian Grymm on either side of the bridge crashed out salutes, so many of them now that they sounded like some diabolical war engine of the Gnarrl. One of the war hammer ploughs, or the great rolling fortresses bristling with rock throwers. Guyuk did not put these troubling thoughts to one side as he acknowledged the salute of the Captain Grymm and strode through the portcullis of the Archivum. Leaders did not flinch from sharp truths. They allowed themselves to be cut by contemplation of the realities, to bleed a little in worrying about all that might go wrong. Better to do so before battle than after, when it was always too late and the bleeding too great to staunch with mere thoughts.

He found the Superiorae and the human female in the great domed library of the Masters Scolari. The atmosphere was hushed, the silence broken only by the rustle of scrolls, the scrape of bone quills on wyrm-hide parchment and the occasional bizarre exclamation of the Superiorae dar Threshrendum ur Grymm in the strange wet tongue of the calflings.

‘Fuckin’ awesome. This is made of win. Yeah, fucking win, baby!’

What was the Superiorae saying?

The human, Polly ur Farr’l, did not so much as flinch at Guyuk’s approach. That was explicable, he supposed, because the Threshrend Majorae was enhancing her natural
gurikh
, which she apparently had in abundance, but surely not such abundance that being cast into the dark heart of the UnderRealms would not undo her fragile mind.