Ascendance: Dave vs. the Monsters by John Birmingham

Author:John Birmingham [Birmingham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780345539922
Google: OP2cBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0345539915
Barnesnoble: 0345539915
Goodreads: 23164910
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2015-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

18

As was so often the case, Lord Guyuk ur Grymm was not entirely sure of what the Threshrend spoke. From the tenor of his delivery he thought the empath was speaking purely to fill up the silence in his head, lest the voices of those souls he had consumed echo too loudly inside his skull. The lord commander was learning to indulge his pro-consul in such moments, grunting occasionally as though he attended more closely to the Threshrend’s endless prattle than was actually the case.

‘I mean, if we had some fucking YouTube down here we could like have our own channel and shit. We could be fucking coining it, man . . .’

The stomping of hardened feet and the scraping of claws on the stone tiles of the palace forecourt made it easier to ignore Compt’n ur Threshrend’s babbling. Should he return to discussing the stratagems and tactics of the war in some useful manner, Guyuk would return to paying him heed. For the age they spent traversing the long march to the palace, the Superiorae babbled incessantly about the calfling Farr’l, and her role in his plan, and how important that role was, and how he simply couldn’t have her eaten by any old daemon, and how he hoped everyone understood that, especially the two Lieutenants Grymm assigned to escort her Above. Lord Guyuk had thought him addled with hunger, but now simply thought him addled. Naturally, he had not told the Superiorae of the experiments now underway in the Consilium, where other Threshrend, veteran empaths, consumed the thinkings of scores of captives, but Guyuk had reason to hope the masters’ investigations might prove fruitful. He was not entirely sure Compt’n ur Threshrend was not losing his minds.

For the moment, however, Guyuk was content to march at the head of the lieutenants’ detail, the Threshrend scurrying along beside him, hurrying to keep up. The dark red skies of the Demesne ur Horde were streaked with far-off Drakon smoke and low drifts of volcanic plume. The dense, black tendrils obscured the uppermost towers of the palace. The great court was largely empty, save for a few war bands of Grymm who drilled at close quarters, and a Dread Company of Gnarrl constructing scaffolds for the ritual abasement of dar ienamic captured in the Above. Not Men, of course. Such human prisoners as the Grymm had taken in Manhatt’n and Om’haa were in the pits awaiting interrogation.

The great iron racks and triangles where Gnarrl hammered and strained to fashion the traditional installations of torture would soon host captives from the Sectum Gargui and Qwm, taken for trophies at the chaotic edge of battle.

Once, Lord Guyuk would have fumed at the impudence of the rival sects, daring to tread upon ground the Horde had claimed, even if by right of traditional fief. The human cities of Manhatt’n and Om’haa might well lie within lands claimed by other sects once upon an eon, but those lands now belonged to She of the Horde by right of occupation.

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