New original story: The Time of the Orc, chpt 1
First chapter of another original fantasy story. Should be 3-4 chapters.
The Orc Empire has conquered the Elven Kingdoms, and stands poised to wipe out the last resistance. The future may depend on the choices of a single soldier...a single Orc.
A story of war and redemption, rated T
http://www.fictionpress.com/s/3073864/1/The-time-of-the-Orc
Eighth day of Sunmonth, twenty first hour and thirty. Fourth day of the sack of Holmhaven. Coming back to barrack and pallet after a trash shift. Lifting the spindly, hair-covered corpses of Uuhlz on a pitchfork and tossing them onto the bonfires in the plaza of their city. Hundreds of the creatures dead in the final assault-hundreds more being driven away chained, for slavery in the mills and mines. Other squads still in their black battle armour were collecting Uuhlz heads and stacked them around the gates. Piles of their hideous pale faces and pointed ears.
The boys sang the old work-songs as we worked, deep and spirited. They laughed out loud, simply from being alive after so much killing. A few Uuhlz (Elves, as they call themselves) sung out a high wailing song to mourn their city, tearing at their yellow manes. Some boys got fed up with the noise and beat them into silence with rough green fists.
The city smells of fear, overflowing middens and burning, like any city after a siege. The neatly planned wooden houses are half razed; stone buildings and spires are turned black from white by smoke. It'll be rebuilt, before Orcs settle here, with sewers, breweries, prisons and factories. The Elves crammed the balconies of many buildings with flowering plants, for their own alien reason. The Warlords have already set up command in the central keep. This morning, they ordered all the plants from the houses thrown down to the streets and burnt. I couldn't see the point of that.
I know no Orc soldier can keep a record like this, or not lawfully. But I can't talk to anyone; they'd not understand if I tried. I spent the last two hours after my shift drinking five hundred-year Elven wine like cheap rotgut, with some boys from the unit. The longer it lasted, the more weary, silenced and angry with something I got.
The name's Gazza. Lieutenant in the Spear-Splitter army of the Orc Empire; been in the Spear-Splitters since my warrior-age. Born in the Western Lands, fought in the War of Return-the years it took to wrestle half the Great Land from the Elf nations had more killing in them together than a hundred sieges like this. The scar from my right eye-tusks to the bridge of my snout was from that too. But then there was the Peace, the first in Orc history. Two years without war, before an Elf army swept out of Rumahon, this eastern forest country. That's why we're here now, sitting on their gutted city.
They hadn't a hope of driving us back to the sea and the Western Lands-they just killed every Orc in every town they could sack, and freed their Elf slaves to kill more of us. Slave revolts flared up in districts all over the Empire. The Gutripper and Shield-Breaker armies put those down, with a few mass hangings-no point in wasting slaves without need. It only took the Spear-Splitter army to corner the Rumahon incursion and put it down. We trapped them in a bend of the Ox river, and took the desperate charge of their cavalry on our pikes. Then we pounded through the storm of arrows, trusting our armour until we reached their lines and cut them down. Rozzag, my comrade since both our Warrior-ages, was killed by a neck-cut. I cut down the Elf who got him a second later. As it bled out, I actually seized its neck, and ask why did his race hate us this much? Its teeth were horribly thin as it grinned, its eyes obscenely big and bright like an insect.
"Because you hate the Light. And the Light hates everything you do, your malice, your pride-"
"What Light? Your God? I don't know your God!" The creature gave a hacking laugh.
"How could you know God…? You're monsters. It's our duty to wipe you all-" Something filled me with rage, and I buried my sword in his head.
-0-
We'd conquered all the Elves' mudhole countries that we could reach. Made them slaves, but gave them industry, paved roads and proper laws-civilisation with purpose. The Rumahon incursion made the High Warchiefs decide that it wasn't enough; there had to be a final demonstration to bring the Empire a final peace. They sent the Spear-Splitter and Limb-lopper armies into Rumahon a few months later. We spent weeks tramping through those guuing forests, getting picked off by archers that vanished into the shadows, ambushes and traps. We kept burning down every town in our path, and herding all the Elves we found into prison camps. Finally the Rumahon Elves pulled all their people back into Holmhaven, their great city from the past age, with stone walls.
We spent a month blasting those walls with trebuchets and siege cannons, until we had practicable breaches. Then we charged up the hills of gravel in our heavy plate-the elves on the walls had ornamented armour and thin, delicate blades. Orc swords are dense folded steel with a shallow curve; ugly weapons for chopping torsos in half. The Orcs have only known war from our birth; the arms we forge are the best. The elves still fought hard; the weight of arrows and blades sent some of us tumbling back down the breach. But we threw the last defenders from walls running with blood, and streamed down to the city.
The War of Return had been a war to bring peace. Orders had always been to accept surrender and spare the unarmed (not that all the boys followed orders, or always got a flogging when they didn't). Orders for Holmhaven were to kill every Elf big enough to hold a weapon, and make final peace through fear. Us boys who lived to clear the top of that wall truly hated every Elf in the world, by the time we reached their city. We hated the High Warchiefs for sending us all this way to storm another dirthole monster-den. If the Elven God had even appeared to our faces, we'd have hated him too. We were happy to follow our orders, and kill them all. Jacko and some other boys struck a war-song as they killed; a song of death and metal with few lyrics repeatable in cold blood.
Our squad was clearing the South-West plaza. We'd broken into one of those wooden buildings they call churches, taken all the gold and silver things we could find and thrown down everything else. I was about to move out, when an old Elf in a white robe stepped out and stood before the door. He'd been hiding in a cupboard; we wouldn't have found him, and he hadn't a chance of holding me back. He didn't even seem to be thinking of that; he was just standing, in my way, looking me in the eye. He really didn't seem afraid, as if there was nothing I could do to him, or he really expected me to stop.
I drove the butt of my sword into the creature's ugly head, throwing him aside, and rushed out. The squad followed me. It's certain that someone else killed that Elf before the dawn. But I don't know why I didn't. I broke the order to kill every adult. But it still doesn't feel wrong. When killing all those Elves and burning them is right, what is wrong? Can we even talk about that, when Orcs have killed Elves for hundreds of years and Elves have killed us, and none of us seem to have a choice about it anymore?
No, it is right. The Elves we killed died with honour, weapons in their hands. A final demonstration of what the Orc Empire will do for the cause of peace.
-0-
Eighteenth day of Sunmonth A week after we took Holmhaven, the Elves attacked the garrison in an outlying Rumahon village. Six Orcs killed; their bodies mutilated and hung from trees. Tunnels have been uncovered in Holmhaven; Elf fighters obviously escaped the sack to join up with however many more were left in the forests.
The armies were sent out from Holmhaven to set up strongpoints across Rumahon, and send out patrols in force. More troops were sent from the empire to seal the border. My unit was sent on a search-and destroy patrol in the area of the attack. We stumped through miles of soggy forests for days, waiting for someone to get an arrow in the neck. For forest work, we were in half-plate; less noise, less steel. The boys never stopped grumbling about the cold, the mud, and bad rations. A march five times as hard wouldn't have finished one of them, but they still grumbled, like always. A bitter, constant hum of enmity at this miserable country and world.
After a few days, Snagrot, the unit's best tracker, uncovered some traces of Elves heading in one direction; from the map, there was a hamlet over there. The next day was silent marching. Every soldier watched the darkness round the trees, waiting for branches to rustle with more than wind, or the softest noise to break the silence. Snagrot reported that the trail wasn't branching off. After a few hours even I could see that another Orc patrol was on the same trail ahead of us.
We finally reached that miserable cluster of wooden houses beside a river. For the first time in days, the sun was shining down from a clear sky. From the edge of the woods I could smell the burning and heard a thin Elven screech. The few boys that could muster a response snorted laughter.
I ran forward with a dozen others. Soldiers from another unit were moving around the huts, leisurely as sharks. There were Elf bodies laid out already. Small corpses and painfully skinny ones with long manes of hair. Elvish females and young only seem to exist for breeding adults-they almost never carry weapons.
An Elf youngling-he'd have come up to my stomach-was standing between the huts, clutching a sword in shaking hands. There was another youngling behind him-a female. An Orc officer was facing him with a battle-axe. Most of the unit were just watching them; from their warpaint, they were from the limb-lopper army.
"W-why? Why do you have to come here? Why do you-you orcs hate us like this?"
The pale little creature had water coming out his huge eyes. He was shaking to the tips of his pointed ears. The officer's grin showed all the fangs behind his foretusks. There was a blue lightning tatoo across his face and bare scalp; his hairless arms were nearly thicker than the youngling's waist.
"You're Uurlz-Elves. Puny, stinking little vermin. You can hardly hold that sword. That thing behind you is a useless burden of hair and meat! Don't need any reason to kill you, none at all."
I saw the young female Elf shut her eyes. The other youngling's eyes stopped making water. It almost looked as if he smiled.
"It's alright, sister," I heard him say to her; "You're not a burden."
Then he rushed at the Orc officer without a sound. The battleaxe broke through his sword and chopped his body open without slowing. The boys watching laughed, almost wearily. The female Elf made another screech, and crawled towards her brother. The officer raised his axe again-but I was in front of him, sword out.
I didn't have a reason. Somehow, in an instant, I had seen that this pathetic creature was in pain. Not just fear of death, but something deep, alien and terrible. In lives of war, Orcs only feel for fighting comrades; we've got nothing like a family unit. There's no reason I should ever be capable of feeling an elvish child's pain. But I had to do something in the instant I felt it.
"No honour in killing unarmed females. These Elves should be taken to prison camps. No sense in killing good slaves."
"Who the drek are you? That little maggot is mine. I'm going to kill her, and you're going to turn around and get the drek out of here." I shifted my grip on my sword, "You're going to die for a stinking Elf? Don't that beat it all? A Elf-lover with milk in his veins-"
"Say that again and I'll carve your guts like a pig!"
Fangs bared, we glowered into each other's eyes, searching for a movement that would bring down steel and death. I tried to bite down on my rage. He was bigger than me, but slow and arrogant-I could take him, but several of the other squad had crossbows trained on my head. I could only hear silence from my own squad-I supposed they were still digesting 'Elf-lover'. I might survive if I backed down now, but I'd never get or deserve another ounce of respect in my life. Also, the Elf youngling would be dead.
The sun glared mercilessly down. The officer's tatoo creased, as his glare blazed hotter; my foot shifted an inch. I heard a crossbow being cocked behind me, and wondered if it was aimed at my own neck. Slowly, the other officer relaxed, and waved a hand.
"Have the maggot, do whatever you want with her. Don't say nothing about this, or I will have your nads for it."
I glanced round; Snagrot had aimed his crossbow at the officer. The other unit was backing down and moving out. The little Elf looked more terrified than ever; I've heard that Orc language sounds something like a fight between a pig and a giant ape to Elven ears, though it sounds pleasant enough to us. She had a striking long yellow mane, the same colour as all the Rumahon Elves-though Elves from any place look just as shrunken and ugly to us, whatever.
I shoved her towards some of the boys, who were rounding up a few more surviving Elves from their huts. Then I threw an arm round Snagrot's shoulders.
"Thanks for that, brother. We did good-"
"Just don't try to report that git for killing slaves, Boss." He hissed at me through his fangs, "And for drek's sake don't do nothing that stupid again."
"What? You backed me up didn't you?"
"I wanted to get out alive. I mean to get out of this dirthole country alive-meaning, I'm not going to let a good officer get himsElf killed for an Elf. We've been killing the maggots since we come here-saving a couple don't make us heroes, or different, or nothing. You think it makes a difference to that youngling? She's still looking at you like a great big monster."
I looked back at the little Elf. The boys had roped her in a line with the other prisoners; behind them; after searching the huts for weapon they were burning the rest of them. Her great eyes were fixed on me with all the Elves, shimmering weakly with loathing.
I'd thought I had to do something, to prove what kind of Orc I was, and not back down from what I felt was right. But what was right, or good, about something I'd done to pacify my own feelings and sElf-respect? These Elves would live, instead of getting cut down. But why did these ones deserve to live, when the hundreds in Holmhaven had been rightly slaughtered? If there was nothing else to goodness then it was a pathetic thing without meaning, in a universe ruled by war and necessity.
I think there aren't many Orcs that think like I do. Or maybe they all have these thoughts, but they never find anything to do with them either. My unit finished its patrol without any more trouble, and bunked down at one of the fortified camps to prepare for more search and destroys. I thought about that hamlet, and those Elf younglings for about two days. Then the High Warchiefs' Order for Rumahon reached the camp, and I stopped thinking.
-0-
Wherever the Rumahon Elves still had weapons, they were still fighting us, none of them were surrendering. The numbers we had killed already had done nothing to show the wisdom of submitting to the Empire. The High Warchiefs had decided that the Elves of Rumahon weren't ever going to stop fighting us. So all of them would be killed. Every warrior, every old man, every yellow haired female and youngling; no new generation would trouble the Empire again. No other nation or slaves would dare to oppose us. Honour was to be thrown aside for necessity. All the Rumahon Elves in the slave camps would be slaughtered first. Any we found in the country had to be killed on sight. I even went to the prison camp and chopped down a few of them myself. Just like that hamlet by the river, it didn't feel like anything.
Our legends say that after the Elves' god created them, the Dark One Maowrath created Orcs to show what life really was. He took some Elves, and changed their bodies and minds to make them strong, hard, free. Impossible to defeat, or to turn from anything they purposed to do. Maowrath vanished from the world centuries ago, after the age of gods. For some reason, nobody's ever worshipped him for creating us.
For centuries before the Empire, Orcs were nothing but a heap of feuding, barbarian tribes, always at war with the Elf kingdoms and always losing. We killed as many Elves as we could; we'd even torture them or eat them, in those bad old days. The Elves never did anything like that-they simply killed Orcs by the thousands with their arrows and horses, more than we ever killed of them.
Those tribes were finally driven out of the Great Land and across the sea, to the Western Lands. The Elves we met there didn't live in cities like the ones in the great land. They lived in trees, used stone weapons, and spent most of their time singing about stars and rivers. Orcs wiped them out within years to take the mines and lumber they were living over, and spread over the whole land. Then they warred with each other, over the same mines and lumber-without honour, war and death, the existence of Orcs had no meaning.
The Prophet changed that. Seventy years ago, his message spread across the Western Lands like wildfire, leaving nothing the same where it had gone. He preached the incredible message that the purpose of war was final peace. All the Orc tribes had to unite, and fight until all of their enemies were subdued. Then they would discover a meaning in the absence of war that the most glorious struggle and victory could never touch.
The Orc Empire was born within a generation, and a giant armada was sailing back to the Great Land, and the War of Return. The war for revenge and eternal peace. And now we're killing an entire people, down to the last youngling, for eternal peace. The bad old days never really end; we run and never get anywhere.