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as old as Dagurashibanipal would leave this place without a curse on it. And my guess is that it’s probably one that operates better the longer one is actually kept near the hoard.”
    “Mmmm…Yes. Let’s
go
.”
    Sneaking out, keeping in the odd shadows that dying magic casts, Will hugged the cavern wall, edging round towards the tunnel. He passed close by Shazgurim as she lifted a thick metal stick with two stems projecting downwards, one short and straight, the other curved. She pulled the crossbow-type trigger.
    Dukka-dukka-dukka-dukka-Foom!
    The blacksmith-foundry noise ripped at Will’s ears andstomach. He ducked down into shadow. Hot metal sprayed the opposite walls, splinters of stone filled the cavern, and the orcs cheered. Shazgurim threw the weapon down and seized another, which seemed to require the loading of a metal canister into the muzzle.
    Will, sneaking past the first abandoned weapon, noted the sigils
7.62 AVTOMAT KALASHNIKOV OBRAZETS 1947G
imprinted in the metal.

4

    Barashkukor dozed in the warm sun, and woke when his helmet fell over his eyes.
    He grunted and snarled. “Marukka, go away!”
    Another rock bounced off the parapet wall. This one hit his poleaxe, which he had propped against the crenellations. The weapon slid down with a crash. Barashkukor picked it up, scratching between his long, hairless ears.
    “Barashkukor!” The black orc Kusaritku bawled from further down the wall. “What’s all the bleedin’ noise about?”
    Barashkukor leaned over the parapet.
    Thirty feet below, on the foot-trampled earth outside Nin-Edin’s main gate, two halflings stood looking up at him. Each wore doublet and trunk-hose, very ripped and travel-stained. The halfling with curly black hair wore black and grey garments and a blackened mail-shirt, and he had a short-sword buckled to his side. The brown-haired halfling had a heavy crossbow slung across his back, a mailcoat, and stood with a foot up on one of a pair of heavy, brass-bound chests.
    Barashkukor stared down at their foreshortened figures, his jaw gaping.
    The curly-haired halfling shouted, “Open! Open in the name of the nameless!”
    Forty-three miles away, as sunrise touches the towers of Sarderis, The Named suddenly wakes from sleep with an expression that makes her pale features shocking in their ugliness.
    Barashkukor stared down the pass again, between the massive raw-ochre slopes of the mountains. A small plume of dust rose from the road.
    “
That’s
not our escort…” He slitted his eyes against thesunlight blasting back from the dry earth. “Marukka! You’re not going to believe this, Marukka…”
    The female orc leaned her hairy elbows in the gap in the crenellations. “What am I not going to…Hey! Those aren’t the warriors we sent out as the halflings’ escort. Dark Lord’s arse!
More
travellers? I don’t believe it. Turn out the guard!”
    Barashkukor tumbled down the steps into the guard-room, knocking an ongoing card game aside, grabbed up a helmet (a size too large) and a spiked mace, and bolted out to the main gate. He peered through the portcullis.
    The plume of dust was closer.
    Just distinguishable, on a Man-skull-ornamented standard, the banner of the nameless fluttered. Barashkukor strained sharp eyes, making out the standard-bearer and what looked like an immense loaded traverse made by lashing together pine-trunks.
    “You! Here!”
    He scurried to lend his weight to the winch that lifted the portcullis. Groaning and sweating, ten orcs at last got it up. Barashkukor sat down with a thud in the dust.
    “They’re coming,” the largest black orc Azarluhi said, “whoever they are.”
    Barashkukor heaved himself to his feet, settling the too-large helmet well back on his skull. It crushed his long, hairless ears uncomfortably. He unbuckled his brigandine, sweating in the noon heat and smelling like wet dog, and strolled to the gateway. The party was near enough now to make out