Here's the first part of Gorhak the Half-Orc story. I will write the second part of it later, maybe over the week-end. this will be the last book in the Orc Chronicles. and the only story in Orc, that wasn't written by Vocha.
Gorhak the Half-Orc
The Story of a Broken Head.
Part I
This story here I tell, is the making of a jewel unlike others.
I was lost. Rare it was that I lost myself anywhere on Nirn, and let me tell you - I was enjoying it, immensely.
My travel had led me three days ago to The Last Home, a shabby place you can’t even call a village, the kind of place that is at the end of civilized land, the end of the road, the last stop before the wilderness. Of course it’s as the saying goes, cause this wilderness always have more intelligent life or monsters that consider themselves civilized, so that civilized border can be quite pesky as we never really know where it really is..
I had heard of the place in my travels as it was also rumored to be the last blacksmith this far South. I was a little taken aback though when I realized that it wasn’t a forge that made weapons, but rather one that only take care of horses hoofs once in a while. So I took advantage of the other mercantile aspect of the place, and ordered a hot meal and some spiced wine.
I sat down nearby the fire, it was a good fire.
In that inn there was that old orc matron, she eyed me as soon as I entered the room and as I took off my hat I noticed how she was looking at me from the dark corner where she was seated. Her staring was so intense, the yellow of her eyes where bulging out of their wrinkled sockets in an alarming and so charming way. I smiled at her, bowing politely and extended my hand as I introduced myself. She threw her chair closer and I started to smell a peculiar odor, old cheese and stale ale. She told me she had heard of me before, in a voice that sounded like she had wind caught in her throat. She was croaking and spitting on me profusely, and I was really starting to enjoy this fine damsel…when she said to me:
-Green Wanderer hey? I hear you are searching for people that can forge right?
In all my years of wandering the world, if there was something that could get my utmost interest, it was when I was hearing that there was someone I should see. Because when a person is telling me about someone else in this way, it usually meant the person he was referring to me was good, maybe out of ordinary, out-of-ordinary-good…
Her rasping ensued, and she told me of a man who came to this far end of the world as well, but this passed over two decades ago. He was a ranger, and was barely able to stand by himself when he arrived in this same inn.
Korgol Bad-Thumb was and is still the owner of The Last Home. It’s probably due to his bad thumb from where he took his nickname that much is obvious, but this is also what never made him a real smith. His efforts in that field remained few and apart from a few kitchen knives and horseshoes, he never attempted to forge anything else (it is true that his cooking is far better than the wares I was eating it with).
Korgol had a daughter, Kaga, that was rumored to be as beautiful as can be (for an orc). Kaga was also the one who took on herself to have the forge going and regardless of the fact she never had a good teacher, the old lady told me she had a disposition to it.
So that mortally wounded ranger, who came to the inn twenty years ago in a very bad shape, was put in the care of Kaga, and it was her constant dedication to the sick man that finally brought him back to life in a few weeks. After a short stay and deep
to Korgol and Kaga, the nameless ranger took off and disappeared in the wilderness, never to be seen in theses parts again.
As the following months passed, it became obvious to Korgol that the ‘deep
’ the ranger had given to his daughter where indeed deep. Kaga the orc was pregnant of a half-human bastard. An infant born of two different races will never be accepted as an equal by any of his parents races. And she knew it. She knew also that to give birth to this baby, she would most probably die herself, as it is known that this kind of pregnancy usually destroy the mother at birth.
And so, as her unnatural son was born in incredibly hard labors, Kaga the orc went away.
Korgol Bad-Thumb never liked the bastard child, yet he raised him, unable to end this life that came from his beloved daughter. But it was obvious to the child that his grand-father was in fact, hating him.
He named him Gorhak, and his name soon became spoken as a jest by any who passed by the Last Home. Gorhak wasn’t a happy child, he had no friend, and a grand-father that will laugh with the others and never defend him. He saw many travelers who invariably took the job of laughing of him as well..(this is not what the old orc matron told me, but rather what I picked-up much after).
But she told me part the story of Gorhak youth, and finally how one day he disappeared from the small community. Yet she said that it was him I should seek out if I wanted to see ‘someone who can forge right’. In the last year he was around the place, he became the smith of The Last Home, and - most probably out of rage and in need to prove he was worth something - produced a few very well-made blades that passerby where all buying as he made them. Since he left, and haven’t been seen in a long while, none of these blades are available anymore.
Yet the old brown thing of a lady told me she ‘felt’ he was still around somewhere, and maybe somewhere not far. I like feelings like this, they remind me of nothing I should consider as proof - yet they hold certainty and a great promise of wisdom.…it all make sense when it doesn't, as the Dwemers say.
Heated and excited by this story, I woke-up at dawn the next day and charged into the wilderness in search of the Half-Orc boy. Three days later I was in a position I rarely find myself in, I was lost.
Part II
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