Read Grunts for Free Online

Ashnak straight-armed her into the wall, face-forwards, spat on his horny hands, and battered the last of the flying machinelets into crumpled horn and hawser.
    “Well warned!” he chuckled throatily. “Good exercise for the Agaku, master halfling. Is there more?”
    Will shook his head dumbly.
    “Here!”
Zarkingu hopped from foot to horny foot, wiping the blood from her battered features. “Ashnak! Here!”
    Will carried the glass-and-wire device carefully over to the entrance of a side-cavern, hands still shaking. “Madam Zarkingu, best be wary. Let the experts check it out first. Ned, what do you think?”
    “Mmm…could be fine…”
    “But what
is
it?”
    A vast tunnel stretched out before them, lit by the blue light of dying magic. The sides had been squared off, giving a flat floor and ceiling, and the walls and floor were, for as far as Will could see, lined with metal shelving.
    He stared down the ranks of metal shelves. There were stacks of clothing of an odd colour and cut, metal-and-wire devices, chunks of solid but obviously forged metal—and all this piled high out of sight.
    Beyond this first one, similar chambers stretched off into the underground distance.
    “Different magic…” Zarkingu whimpered. “But not here—not
these
.”
    “What’s this?” The big orc, Ashnak, pushed past her into the first chamber, seizing a big chunk of metal with what looked like a crossbow grip and trigger at one end. He pulled the trigger.
    Foom!
    “Arrrgggh!” Imhullu roared. Fire and shrapnel ricocheted off the tunnel wall behind him, pitted now with a line of two-inch-deep cavities. The squat orc grabbed at the severed tops of his long, hairless ears.
    “Yaayy-ahh!” Ashnak lifted the weapon and pulled the trigger again.
    Dakka-dakka-dakka!
    Will ducked. A furnace briefly opened beside the left side of his face. The stone floor hit him between the shoulder-blades. The wire-and-glass device went flying. An earsplitting sound cracked his skull. Stunned, he hitched himself up onto his elbows, yelling, deafened, “No!
Stop!
”
    Flame seared across Will’s vision, bright as the sun at midday, jabbing from the weapon’s muzzle. An explosion shook the air. Splinters of diamond flew from the adamantine corpse of the dragon, ricocheting back from the vast cave-walls, whizzing past him with dull
whup!
sounds.
    “Weapons!”
    “Ashnak! Ashnak!”
    “The nameless was right!”
    “Fighting Agaku! Fighting Agaku!”
    On knees and elbows, Will Brandiman worked his way rapidly back across the dry stone floor to where his brother lay under the bottom-most metal shelf nearest the entrance. The halfling’s doublet and trunk-hose were thick with dust. He lifted his head slightly as Will pushed in next to him. Orc feet ran past, forward and back, bringing out piles of the metal objects into the main cavern.
    “Are those all weapons, do you think?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised, Will. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
    Horny feet pounded past and then plodded back. Shazgurim swore, dumping what sounded like half a ton of scrap metal in the main cavern.
    “But what kind—sorcerous weapons?”
    “Their magic-sniffer said not.”
    The permanent temperature of the caves, chill but not freezing, began to sink into Will’s bones. He rested his head on his short arms, blocking out the blue-white light. “They’re probably going to kill us as soon as they remember we’re here.”
    Ned whispered, “Can I bring three things to your attention, brother? One: as far as we could make out, Dagurashibanipal sealed up every entrance to this place, apart from that one rat-hole. Two: outside in the chests there is a small amount of the dwarven-rock-blasting powder.”
    Will lifted his head from his arms. “Enough to bring a reasonable chunk of the roof down in that tunnel…What’s the third thing?”
    “And three,” the elder halfling said quietly, “the mad one just said
different magic
. I don’t believe a dragon