This story fragment is meant as an addendum to my Another Approach to Orcs post, giving an example of what I imagine an orc to be like. It's not the primary focus, but I think it comes through.
--------------
In the southeastern reaches of the continent, where the winds slough off the glaciers and carry storms of ice to shore, there is a mountain the locals call Ar Merosha. It draws up gently from the northern plains, smooth and deceptive in slope, for mile after mile, before culminating in a terrible, squat spire of naked stone. No peak in sight challenges it. Ar Merosha's ugly face cows them, and the people who dwell in stone-dug apartments sheltered by thick curtains and coats of cowhide, into submission.
 |
| Source |
The plainspeople migrate to the mountain in spring and emigrate in autumn, like a steady tide splashing the rocks. The apartments are built to house many more than today inhabit the mountain, even at the summer solstice, many more people than live today in the plains beneath Ar Merosha. So they bring everything, their wealth, their animals, their reserves of grain and vegetables to the mountain each spring, and there is no shortage of room. There are stores for the grain and pens for the animals and retreats for the ascetics and great open caverns for the young men and women of the plains who dance raucously to the fiddle and wrestle under the noonday sun and marry each other where the mountain is blind to their joy, and there are new homes for them and their families too. There are aeries for the gold-breasted thrush, which follows the plainspeople in their migration and which they believe is lucky, and there are nooks for the pale-faced eagle, which does the same and is not. There are even wind-blasted caverns inhabited by the orcs, which the plainspeople are always careful to keep out but which make it inside nevertheless.
All these leave the mountain when the plains below turn golden and needles of ice coat the roads in the morning. They take with them the bounty and plenty of the solstice, and the stone apartments sit nearly empty again. Only a rare few remain, to guard the upper passes and conduct the rites of the winter solstice. It is a formality, they know. Nobody travels the upper passes, which lead only to Ar Merosha and so lead not only to a dishonorable death, but a stupid one; and few today believe that the rites are necessary. Whatever dwells about the mountain has no interest in descending from its perch, and knows it would not be welcome if it did.
These few gather all together on the night on the winter solstice, and stay up till sunrise, then sleep clear past lunchtime. Only a handful are needed to fill the old posts: one to guard the pass up, one to guard the way down, and some earnest and hardy folk to keep safe the elders. Only, this year would be different, and there were three reasons why.
The first was that Kimrah, who was to guard the upper pass, traded her sacred post to an orc, furnishing the foul creature with an old leg of mutton. She did this so that she could spend the night in the lower post with the eldest grandson of the old magus, who fascinated her. She was long in arm and strong, strong enough to wrestle the orc to the ground if need be, and skilled enough to pin it securely. And she was clever, otherwise she would not have taken so quickly to the magic which the magus' grandson had whispered to her, and with the bribe of mutton she cast a curse on the orc, so that if it abandoned the post it would lose every drop of luck it had jealously gathered. She made only one mistake; she had assumed the orc valued such a thing, or anything, which was invisible and intangible.
The second was that, in that year, the reavings of the wolf-riders to the north had been few and light. With so much peace and safety about the plains, almost nobody had stayed in the mountain. But a company of strangers had arrived, mercenaries who had made the long trek in the spring from faraway places to make a fortune fighting the wolf-riders and had been left disappointed. Between making the journey home in winter or making some profit by guarding the elders, they chose the latter option. Among them were a pair of campaigning veterans from the armies of rival nations, a devotee of a foreign god with enough good sense to shut his mouth, a learned scholar who politely interviewed the elders for a travelogue she was writing, and several shifty-seeming folk who stuck hard to the heels of their patrons and dreamed of returning to their boring lives in another land.
The third reason was that the leaders of the adventuring company and the orc matched one another for ambition and avarice. The company had relieved from the bloody hands of a fellow treasure seeker a tablet which detailed an ancient treasure hidden in the heart of the mountain, and the defenses within. The orc had dared a winter jaunt up the mountain pass years ago, and found the outline of a great door cut into the cliffside. The two schemed, and ensured Kimrah would be away from her post that night.
So at sunset on the solstice, when the elders settled within for the long night, the company ventured out with hooded lanterns. A blizzard rose up from the plains as they passed the upper post and joined the orc. Any of the plainspeople would have run screaming from the omens that night. The croak of a pale-faced eagle followed the company the whole way. The orc swore constantly, damning the pebble in its boot and its stomachache and its soiled underclothes. No local swore outdoors if they could avoid it, let alone in the direction of the mountain, lest their curses carry on the wind and awake the winged demons under the snow there. It did not care, and the company was too ignorant of the local customs to be alarmed.
They trudged up the sleet-slicked passes in silence. It was necessary to focus oneself entirely on the task of putting one foot in front of the other, or else one would slip, and getting back up would require two more pairs of hands. If the pass had been exposed to the mountainside, they would all surely have fallen to the crags below.
The orc led them up and down the spidery network of mountain passes, and the company despaired of ever making it back down without its help. Then, as the blizzard grew fearsome and threatened to blow out their lights, the orc exclaimed aloud and pointed to the doorway.
A sheer, flat wall of stone was recessed into the mountainside. There were no markings, no handle, no lock. Only a hairline-thin fracture was visible in the rough shape of a great door. The company, already fatigued and exasperated with the creature, turned on it, accusing it of bringing them up the mountain for nothing. The scholar quieted them all, and continued her examination in the roaring blizzard. Then she stepped back and gave the order to break the door down. One of the soldiers held up a great sledgehammer, and bolstered by the acolyte's spell, he struck the stone with mighty blows, drowning out the blizzard. With each strike, the hairline fracture widened, and soon came open entirely. The stone fell away, and the company stood below an arch, wide enough for an oxcart and tall enough for a giant to stoop beneath it.
The adventurers and their torches found shelter from the buffeting winds. A sense of relief flooded over them, momentarily safe from the storm and no longer having to look upon the ugly face of Ar Merosha. But their relief was mistaken; they stood in the heart of the mountain, and their luck was running out swiftly.
--------------
Like what you read here? Be sure to leave a comment below and follow the blog to see new updates. As always, thank you for reading, and have a lovely week.
No comments:
Post a Comment