In the Company of Ogres Page 6

  He turned to Sally. “Disgusting mammal stereotyping.” His leaves brushed the salamander’s scales, and he plucked the smoldering bits of foliage before the flames could spread.

  Ned moved on before he could say anything else he might regret. “I didn’t know there was a treefolk union,” he whispered to Gabel.

  “Yes, sir. Only four of them in the whole Legion, but they’ve strong connections to the Troglodyte Brotherhood and United Siege Engine Operators. Best not to offend them.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Next was an elf. White stubble covered her shaved head. Her eyes were pink, her skin smooth and chalky. Although Ned had never found elves especially attractive, she might’ve been beautiful if she weren’t quite so chubby. It didn’t help that she was picking her nose.

  “This is Supply Sergeant Ulga, sir,” said Gabel.

  She wiped her finger on her sleeve and nodded to Ned. “How’s it going?”

  “Could be better,” he answered honestly.

  “Ulga is part of the conjurer division, sir,” said Gabel.

  “Any good, sergeant?”

  “I get by, sir. If I do say so myself.” She reached into the air with a flourish and produced a plate of biscuits, which she presented with a smile. “Help yourself, sir.”

  Ned took a bite and instantly regretted it. It wasn’t that the biscuit tasted bad. It actually had no taste at all. But it was so dry that it sucked all the moisture from his mouth. He swallowed. The morsel scraped its way down his throat and landed hard in his stomach.

  Ulga clasped her hands before her, slowly spreading them to reveal a tin cup. She pointed her finger, the one that’d been up her nostrils only moments ago. Wine dripped from her fingertip to fill the cup, which she then offered to Ned. “I call it Ulga’s Special Vintage. Have a taste, sir.”

  He took a gulp and retched. The warm drink took away his dry mouth, only to replace it with a slimy dampness. It was less a beverage and more a parasite clinging to his tongue.

  Ulga read the disgust on his face. “Begging your pardon, sir, but it ain’t all that easy to make the good stuff out of thin air. I ain’t heard a man complain yet when nothing else was available. And it might not taste so good, but it’ll get you drunk pretty fast.”

  “It will?”

  “Yes, sir. Pure magic in a cup. There ain’t nothing quite like it. Except maybe doom stout, but not many fools around who’ll drink that.”

  Ned forced another swallow and emptied the cup. He did feel a little light-headed. “How much can you make?”

  “About five pints a day, sir.”

  “Make as much as you can, and have it sent to my quarters.”

  “Yes, sir.” She grinned proudly. “I can see you’re a man of discriminating tastes.”

  He ran his tongue across his teeth, trying to scrape away the aftertaste. But free booze was free booze.

  “And, sergeant, wash your hands before you do it,” he added, moving down the line.

  Miriam the siren waited next. Dusk was now upon the citadel, and the shadow of her body was very appealing. Although that was probably the enchanted wine at work.

  “And, of course, you’ve already acquainted yourself with our morale officer,” said Gabel.

  The rest of the line chuckled except for Seamus, who had worked his way from bucket to potted petunia. Sally the salamander turned a bright blue.

  Ned couldn’t quite look Miriam in the eyes. But she didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable and winked at him with a slight smile. Maybe it was the wine, maybe her innate siren charm, maybe just ordinary indiscriminate animal lust, but he smiled back.

  “Is that it, Number One?” he asked.

  Gabel nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Ned looked the line up and down. Ogre Company was the last stop in a failing career in the Legion. Even ogres didn’t end up here unless they’d screwed up somewhere. But overall, they didn’t seem a bad bunch. He didn’t see why they couldn’t be made into something worthwhile.

  Too bad he wasn’t the man for the job. He just wanted to put in his time and avoid getting killed again.

  A huge, shrieking shadow soared over the courtyard. The soldiers ran for cover. Except for Seamus, who was now a battle-ax, and Ned, who, lacking the reflexes, didn’t realize what was happening until nearly being crushed beneath a roc’s talons. The great bird craned its long neck downward to within a few feet of Ned’s face. Sharp teeth lined its jagged beak, and its tongue was long and blue. Its breath was hot and sweet, like ripening honeydew. He’d never been close enough to the maw to notice before.

  The roc snorted, and he thought for sure it would devour him. But Ace slid down its neck and kicked the bird on the back of its head. The creature barely noticed, but hissed and turned away.

  “Sorry about that, sir. Long flight. Morena is a little hungry.” Ace hopped to the ground. In one hand, he held a small pouch. In the other, he clutched the roc’s reins, seemingly unaware that Morena could catapult him a good mile or two with a casual whip of her head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Gabel. “You can’t land one of these things in the citadel proper.”

  “Beg to differ, sir.” Ace puffed his pipe through grinning teeth. “I can land a roc pretty much anywhere. Mind you, getting them back in the air can be tricky. Especially Morena here. She likes a lot of room.”

  The roc beat her wings, and Ned expected her to fly away with the goblin wrapped in her reins.

  “Quiet down, girl.” Ace hopped in the air, yanking the tether with all his weight, which was about half as much as one of Morena’s feathers. “Got to keep a firm hand with them, sir. Can’t give them an inch.”

  Morena’s serpentine tail thrashed wildly. Being crushed once was more than enough for Ned. He stepped back very slowly so as to not draw the roc’s attention. She shrieked in a warbling, ear-splitting cry.

  “Oh, shut up, Morena.” Ace picked up a stone and hurled it at the monster. The rock bounced off her beak. She quieted, turning her hungry gaze upon the goblin. She licked her beak, splashing puddles of drool.

  “Get that thing out of here,” commanded Gabel.

  “In a second, sir. But I was told to give this to the commander without delay.”

  Ace tossed Ned the pouch. The courtyard lightstones were burning now, and Ned glimpsed the wax seal with a symbol painted in blood: a scale encircled by a winged serpent atop a single, demonic eye. In all of Brute’s Legion, there was no more dreaded division, no section more coldly ruthless, no battalion as unforgiving or merciless.

  Accounting.

  Ned shivered.

  The roc jerked its head, lifting Ace in the air. The bird snapped up the goblin in her beak. Ned, pouch in hand, almost envied Ace.

  The roc ruffled her feathers and shuddered. She gagged and spat up her morsel. Ace landed beside Ned. The goblin rose, wiped the saliva from his goggles, wrung the moisture from his scarf.

  “Where’s my pipe?”

  Morena belched it up. Ace clamped it in his teeth and puffed, though the flame had been doused by the roc’s copious saliva. “Keep it up. Just keep it up, and maybe I’ll eat your damn dinner myself.”

  Morena shook the ground with two thuds of her tail.

  “A‘right already. A’right.” He tugged on the reins. Morena lowered her head, and he climbed aboard. He whipped the reins. The roc hopped five times, nearly falling over every time. Once she teetered close to falling on Ned, but he didn’t bother to move. Couldn’t really see the point. Finally, Morena managed to stay airborne.

  “Can’t give ’em an inch,” muttered Ace.

  Morena offered a throaty growl and flew away.

  Ned stood there awhile not moving.

  Regina, her arms still full of scrolls, strode up to him. “Sir? Are you well?”

  He nodded. Then turned and walked away, swallowed by the shadows.

  “You’d better return those scrolls to records.” Gabel held up a calico kitten. “And yo
u’ll have to look after Seamus for a while.”

  Seamus mewed apologetically. Ogres considered cats a delicacy, and his life was never in more danger than when he was stuck in kitten form. Shapeshifting was a complicated business, but Regina often wondered if this was an accident. She usually took care of him when it happened.

  Gabel tossed the kitten onto the scrolls. Seamus curled up on the heap to rest his head between her breasts. By her code, she should’ve beaten him to a pulp. But he was so damn cute.

  “If I ever find out you’re faking this ...”

  Purring, he swished his tail.

  She kissed his head. “... I’ll grind you into furry mush.”

  With a soft, feline smile, Seamus batted his big green eyes.

  Seven

  NED FOUND HIS OFFICE with some effort. He didn’t bother asking directions. He just wandered through the citadel until he discovered a door marked Commander’s Office. It was right next to his quarters, which made a lot of sense after the fact.

  He sat in the room behind a small desk and stared at the pouch. Stared as if it might explode or dance around or some such thing. The contents of the pouch by themselves were harmless. Yet he knew their meaning too well.

  He’d been a bookkeeper in the Legion’s accounting division. Balancing ledgers. Checking expense reports. Filing and alphabetizing. An audit every so often. Grunt work. But the true terror of the accounting office rested in that small pouch.

  He found a half-full bottle of liquor and took a long swig to discover that it contained either very good whiskey or very bad whiskey. He broke the seal on the pouch. Inside he found a lump of green and black coal with a slot in it, and a small coin wrapped in cloth. The coin was half gold, half platinum. On the gold side, a grinning, devilish visage was imprinted. On the platinum, a fat demon balanced the world on a scale against a pile of coins. Around the edges, the simple motto of the dreaded ninth circle of Hell was inscribed: “Better Evil Through Profit.”

  The ninth circle was where Hell did its accountancy. The demons within were ruthlessly efficient. All they cared about were profit and cost-effectiveness. Everything was a debit or credit, a gain or a loss. Their ultimate goal was to reduce the universe to a calculation, a final heartless equation in which every soul, living and dead, divine and damned, would serve in the Glorious Ultimate Dividend. They were evil incarnate, but they were the best at what they did, which was why the Legion subcontracted much of its troubleshooting work their way.

  Ned drank the rest of the bottle before getting on with it.

  He ran the sharp edge of the coin across his thumb, drawing blood. The coin absorbed the offering, gaining a crimson glint. Then he dropped it in the slot. The air sizzled. The unholy lump broke apart, hatching a devilish little creature, eight inches of stringy, red demon. The homunculus looked very much like a man, save the scales, wings, tiny horns, hooves, and long pointed tail. The creature was balding, though he had tried, with no success, to disguise this by brushing his thin hair across his shiny scalp. He wore a tunic stitched together from the cursed flesh of the damned, and he stank of moldy ledgers and burning dung.

  The homunculus adjusted his thick spectacles and twitched his crooked nose. “Never Dead Ned, I presume.”

  Ned nodded.

  “Excellent. Shall we get down to it?” The homunculus glanced around. “Where are your ledgers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The homunculus frowned. “This is quite unacceptable. Time is money, after all. Every wasted second is another expense against the Final Profit. You should’ve been prepared.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mortals.” The demon sighed. “Just as well, I suppose.

  We can skip the consultation phase. Saves time. Frankly I’ve looked over this case and already sent ahead my recommendations. Anything you said would’ve been summarily dismissed. I wouldn’t even have listened. I would’ve just nodded my head until you were finished speaking and said what I’m going to say anyway. I did expect more from a fellow accountant though. Must say I’m disappointed.”

  “Sorry.”

  The homunculus kept on talking as if he hadn’t heard Ned. “There is no business like war. Yet Ogre Company has never produced a profit for the Legion. This is unacceptable. It’s a blasphemy, an unforgivable heresy against the Dark Ledger. There was talk, very serious consideration, of dissolving this particular venture and allocating its resources to a more productive end.”

  Ned didn’t consider that a bad thing. If Ogre Company disbanded, he might get sent back to bookkeeping.

  “However, it all comes down to the numbers,” continued the homunculus. “The numbers reveal all. Profit exists throughout the universe. If we cannot find it, then we have let the numbers down, not the other way around. As such, I see no reason to abandon this project just yet.”

  The demon beat his wings and hovered in the air. He snapped his fingers, and a scroll materialized, floating before him. “I’ve drawn up a fiscal battle plan, which I can assure you is spelled out with such thorough magnificence that anyone should be able to follow it.” He pushed his spectacles to the end of his nose and arched his brows in Ned’s direction. “And I do mean anyone.”

  The scroll unfurled. It slithered across the desktop. When Ned reached for it, the parchment slapped at his fingers hard enough to leave a pinkish bruise. The budget shook, drew near Ned’s face, and snarled.

  “Careful,” said the homunculus, “she bites. Perhaps it would be wiser if I explained some of the finer points. Just to be certain you understand.” He snapped his fingers, and the scroll, growling in an obscenely affectionate manner, fell obediently into his grasp. “The plan is simple. It’s broken into seven hundred and seventy-seven subsections.” He cleared his throat. “Which I will now go over in detail.”

  Ned slumped in his chair. He wondered if Ulga would ever get here with that wine.

  The homunculus droned on for hours. His squeaky voice grated on Ned’s ears and stood his hair on end. The demonic bookkeeper chanted his depraved dirge to the powers of infernal accounting, and an evil spell settled on Ned’s office. The scroll unfolded, filling the floor with line after line of cost cutting and expense trimming. The walls melted. Cruel imps cavorted in the shadows. The hourglass on the desk ran backward. And Ned could almost hear the distant howls of the damned.

  The homunculus grew. The demon fed off Ned’s suffering, and his agonizing boredom fed the homunculus well. By the end, he’d grown a foot taller, his skin had turned a brighter shade of red, and his tiny horns had curled into impressive ornaments. Ned hunched in his chair, drooling, with debits and credits poking at his brain with wee pitchforks.

  “In conclusion,” said the homunculus, “I believe this project can be redeemed. Providing Ogre Company can finally be whipped into a functional military unit. But that’s not my end. I’m the accountant, and I can assure you the accounting is flawless.”

  Ned wiped the tears from his face with trembling hands. His flesh felt clammy and cold. The demon’s lecture had leeched Ned’s already diminished will to live. He’d have gladly fallen on his own sword then to end it all. He had no such option. Such were the disadvantages of immortality.

  The ferocious budget slithered around his office, under the desk, across the floor, tightly coiled around his legs, cutting off his circulation. It alternately purred at its creator and grumbled at Ned.

  The homunculus said, “It was my recommendation you be transferred to this post. There was some resistance to the idea. Your military record is nothing exceptional. But I pointed out that all the previous commanders had been fine officers and not one had been able to make anything of Ogre Company. From a logical perspective, it would be a waste of resources to throw another distinguished soldier into the slavering jaws of almost certain death. But here was a man, by which I mean you, who had the necessary bookkeeping experience to understand the situation as most soldiers could not. A man blessed with a curious talent for thwarting death
over and over again. Most importantly, a man who, should this talent fail him, was ultimately expendable.”

  Ned tried to stand. The budget wrapped around his waist, holding him to his chair.

  A satisfied smile crossed the homunculus’s face. “It took some convincing. I think they were just hoping I’d recommend scrapping the whole project. But I convinced them to give it one last shot. You’ve six months to turn this company around. More than enough time if you follow my counsel.”

  Ned couldn’t remember any of the demon’s recommendations. He couldn’t remember anything of the last few hours except the infernal dirge, a hum without words, a song of the fiscally forsaken.

  “Just follow the budget, and do your end, and things should work out fine, Commander.”

  The budget raised up and threatened to slice into Ned’s face with a nasty paper cut. He didn’t want to antagonize it, but his bad left arm had other ideas. It grabbed the empty whiskey bottle and brandished it at the parchment. The budget hissed and spat as it fought with Ned’s arm.

  “What if I can’t make it work?”

  The homunculus chuckled. “A consideration I’ve already taken into account. Profit knows the numbers never fail, but men are prone. In which case, Ogre Company will be dissolved, and its personnel reassigned per my recommendation.”

  “Where would I be going? Back to bookkeeping?”

  The homunculus drank up Ned’s anxiety. The demon’s eyes simmered with red flames. “Oh, no. Your position in that department has already been filled. And it’s a waste of your talents in any case. I believe you’d be of more use in the Berserker Program.”

  Ned’s jaw tightened.

  The homunculus grew another inch. “Berserkers have such generally short careers, I thought it obvious to assign someone who found death less inconvenient. I’m sure you can see the logic.”

  Immortal or not, Ned knew he’d make an abysmal berserker. Berserkers were supposed to rush headlong into battle, mindless raging warriors eager to meet death and drag as many souls as they could along with them. Ned was good at the dying part. He’d had a lot of practice. But he stank at the killing end of it. In his whole military career, he’d killed only one person. And that had been an accident. And someone on his own side. Every other time he’d stepped on a battlefield he’d always been among the first slain.