The History of the Orcs
"...I gave them permission, but I never expected them to raise a whole village in a single day."
Only yesterday this plain had been nothing but waist-high reeds and wind-scoured stone. In the space of one day, thick log palisades now enclosed rows of houses and storehouses, and smoke from roasting meat already curled up from the well-packed paths between them.
Orcs sprinted past with massive logs balanced on one shoulder—logs that three humans would have struggled to shift. Elsewhere a few blows from great hammers squared off boulders; the large stones went to fence posts and house foundations, the smaller ones packed paths and drainage ditches. Nothing was wasted. No one paused to wonder where anything should go.
"...They're better at building houses than I am."
Saak. Beside her, the hidden scales of Masor gave a soft rustle.
"You're right."
High on the distant cliff Alduin let out a low, indignant growl.
Krrrung.
"The one who melted the door can keep quiet."
Alduin made no further reply. Lakia snorted and walked into the village.
The houses had doors and ceilings tall enough for orc bulk. Inside, each held a proper hearth, a sleeping place, and even racks for weapons. Along the lanes young orcs raced and flung pebbles. When one tumbled he seized the next child's hand, scrambled up, and ran again. Near a great fire-pit a young orc held out meat to a hatchling dragon. The hatchling glanced once toward Lakia before opening its jaws; when the child laughed, it answered with a swish of its tail.
"...They've already made friends."
It was hard to believe these were the same warriors who had driven their weapons into the earth and knelt only the day before.
Crossing the village center she noticed a circular clearing far wider than the rest. The ground was packed smooth without a single stone, thick reeds rising to the ankles. Around it stood a stout log fence and low stone tiers for spectators.
"...What is that place for?"
"Haha. So you've noticed." Tualuktal puffed his chest and laughed. "It is the Reed Wrestling ground."
"...Wrestling ground?"
When she stepped onto the reeds the soft stems sank to her ankles, then slowly rose again.
"You built it properly."
"It must be built properly."
"Why?"
"Orcs break often."
She stared at him a moment.
"...Break what?"
"Bones."
"...Don't say that so casually."
Tualuktal tilted his head in genuine puzzlement.
"When we fight, they break."
"Are they fighting over there right now?"
"It is Reed Wrestling."
"Fists?"
"We do not use them."
"Claws?"
He curled his thick black nails into his palm.
"We fold them."
"Teeth too?"
"We do not use them."
Tualuktal pointed to an orc standing arms crossed in the center of the ring. One ear was half gone, the nose crooked from many breaks; the scars alone said he had planted dozens of opponents into the dirt before anyone ever pulled him off.
"Anyone who grows excited and uses teeth is removed by the referee."
"How?"
"He plants them into the ground."
"...Peaceful."
By orc standards it was.
Boom.
A great drum of beast-hide thundered from one side of the ring. Chatter died; children still chewing meat and warriors tilting kegs all took places on the stone tiers. Dragons on the cliffs peered out one by one. Alduin, highest of all, kept his golden eyes fixed downward and did not move.
A giant painted head to toe in red earth and a warrior white with ash on chest and face strode into the ring. Both dropped to one knee toward the dragons on the cliff. Then they bowed their heads to her as well.
"...To me too?"
"They pay respect to the Mother of Dragons."
"You could have told me first."
Hundreds of eyes rested on her. She cleared her throat and raised a hand to the two warriors.
"Don't get hurt."
Tualuktal's expression turned peculiar. In orc wrestling, "don't get hurt" was probably as useful as "don't get wet" while standing in the rain.
"No—just don't die."
Their eyes brightened.
"And don't get hurt too badly either."
The light dimmed a little. That seemed about right.
The referee bound thick belts of twisted reed about their waists. The instant they locked grips on each other's shoulders and belts, the drum spoke again.
Boom.
Thud.
Hundreds of orcs stomped as one.
"Aruen bael sarom."
A low, rough song rolled across the wrestling ground.
"Eshura nilu toren."
One voice became ten, then dozens. Soon every orc present overlapped in the same rhythm until the entire gorge resounded. She could not catch the meaning. But she knew that ancient, heavy vibration. It was the same sound Gargantua had uttered five hundred years ago when he bowed his head before Alduin—the voice dragons used to lay their will upon the world, a sound that never quite reached the ear and only thrummed from inside the body.
Dragon Speech.
"What does that song mean?"
Tualuktal answered while still singing.
"I do not know."
"...You sing it without knowing?"
"The orcs who lived before us sang it, and those before them sang it as well." He thumped his chest once with a fist. "Even if the meaning is forgotten, the song remains."
The referee's arm fell.
Crash!
The two warriors met head-on; though no fist flew, an explosive boom shook the air. Reed belts strained taut as the red warrior drove forward; the white warrior's feet carved long furrows in the earth. When the red warrior heaved his opponent skyward, the white one's leg hooked behind an ankle. Off-balance, the red warrior stamped his heel down hard.
Crunch.
The packed dirt split.
"Sirael nes balia!"
With the new verse the red warrior lifted the white one clean overhead. The white warrior twisted mid-air, clutching neck and belt; the tangled giants spun once and crashed into the reeds.
Kwaaang!
Reeds and dust erupted. Invisible Masor stepped in front of her; flying stems struck his transparent wings and fell severed to either side. When the dust settled the red warrior lay pinned, back and shoulders flat to the ground. The referee did not raise a hand.
The red warrior locked both arms around the white warrior atop him, planted one knee, and rose. Slowly. Fully upright while still holding an orc of equal bulk, he arched backward. The white warrior's feet left the earth; he flipped and drove the body into the reeds.
Bang!
The referee's arm shot up.
"Raktur!"
Hundreds of orcs roared the victor's name. Raktur thumped his chest twice, then offered a hand to the fallen. The defeated warrior seized it, rose, and butted foreheads roughly. They punched each other's shoulders once and laughed together as if nothing had happened.
"Kwahahaha!"
Dragons remembered for five hundred years who first stepped on whose tail. Orcs laughed with the opponent who had just slammed them into the dirt. A slightly poor memory, it seemed, served peace better.
The song rose again.
"Aruen bael sarom."
This time the dragons on the cliffs quietly lifted their heads. Alduin's golden eyes narrowed; the three pairs of eyes of Gargantua, crouched at the gorge mouth, slowly opened. The dragons understood.
"Gargantua."
Vast eyes looked down upon her.
"That song is Dragon Speech, isn't it?"
"It is so."
"Yet nothing is happening."
The sky did not split. The wind held its course; not a single reed stirred at the orcs' command. When Gargantua spoke Dragon Speech, the mere drawing of breath made cloud and storm answer. Now, though hundreds of orcs chanted the same words, the ground trembled only from their stomping feet.
"...Even speaking Dragon Speech, orcs have no mana, so there is neither cost nor effect."
"More precisely, they possess no path that reaches the world." Gargantua's voice rolled low. "All living things hold mana, yet dragons are joined to the world from the instant of birth. Other races must open a road through rite and formula."
"So the orcs are only copying the sounds."
"They know the words that open the door, yet they cannot reach the door itself."
Gargantua drew a slow breath. That alone pulled the gorge wind toward his maw; the song of hundreds wavered for a heartbeat. Thin lightning flickered between his six pairs of wings.
"A dragon forges breath in the lungs, loads meaning in the heart, and carries the resonance into the world through horn and scale. The sound that leaves the mouth is only the final husk."
All the orcs possessed was that husk. Meaning forgotten, the art of loading mana lost, no road remaining by which to command the world. Therefore there was no cost either—only winded lungs, hoarse throats, and legs sore from stamping.
One thing still puzzled her.
"If they don't know the meaning, how did the pronunciation stay perfect?"
Tualuktal approached as the song ended.
"Did you enjoy it?"
"Tualuktal—what happens if you sing this song wrong?"
His face hardened.
"We do not sing it wrong."
"Children get it wrong when they first learn, don't they?"
"Then we teach them again."
"How?"
"They watch the mouth of the one who learned first, listen to the breath, and match the feet." He pointed to his own mouth, then his chest, then stamped the earth. "If even one thing differs, we begin the song again from the start."
"If they keep getting it wrong?"
"We sing until it is right."
"If their throats go hoarse?"
"We sing the next day."
"And if they're still wrong the next day?"
"We sing the day after that."
It was simple. Orcs forgot meaning yet never forgot sound. They believed that if even one syllable differed the highest god could not hear them, so each who learned first passed on mouth-shape, breath, and the very rhythm of the stamping feet exactly to the next. Without letters or records, for hundreds of years—perhaps thousands—they repeated the same song.
"...Preserved because they were ignorant, is that it?"
Tualuktal tilted his head.
"What do you mean?"
"It's a compliment."
"Thank you."
She let the explanation rest; it was too much trouble. At the edge of the ring a child watched an old orc's mouth and carefully shaped the same words. She turned to Gargantua.
"What do those words mean?"
Gargantua studied the orcs a long while before speaking.
"Beneath the highest breath."
The first verse.
"We tread the same earth."
The second.
"Never forgetting the blood that was spilled, the fallen and the standing return together."
It suited wrestling better than she had expected.
"Is it a dragon oath?"
"It is not a dragon oath."
"Then whose?"
Gargantua could not answer. For five hundred years he had guarded the gorge mouth, recognized Alduin as king, and remembered ancient things even dragons had forgotten. Yet even Gargantua did not know where the song began. Something the dragons themselves had lost was being kept, meaning unknown, in the throats of orcs.
Boom.
The drum called the next match. Young orcs cheered; two fresh warriors walked onto the reeds. Hundreds of thick voices rose once more in the same verses.
"Aruen bael sarom."
Beneath the highest breath.
Thud.
"Eshura nilu toren."
We tread the same earth.
Thud.
"Sirael nes balia."
The fallen and the standing return together.
There was no cost as Dragon Speech, no power to move the world. Yet when the song rang out, orcs bearing different scars and different weapons stamped in the same rhythm. Winner and loser stood shoulder to shoulder; the old passed the sound they had inherited to the young. The world did not hear their words. The orcs heard one another's voices.
"...So it isn't completely without effect."
Boom.
The drum sounded.
Thud.
Hundreds of orcs struck the earth as one. That sound, rising over the plain that had been empty only yesterday, felt like the first heartbeat of a village just beginning to live.