The Good Ork

Chapter 6: In Which We Search for the First Ork

Still and despite all that I have written here, I do have happy memories of my childhood. Yes, I was hated by almost everyone I knew. Indeed, I broke more bones and spilled more blood growing up than most humans do in a lifetime. Yet I knew nothing else, and life, for all its disadvantages, is better than the alternative.

And my mother did love me kindly, as is demonstrated by how rancidly she spoiled me at an early age. For every time I shamed Brekazog with my weakness, there would be a dozen trips out into the wastes on our own, playing sister and brother.

Our favorite game was one of our own devising, although to us it was no game. The legends all said that the First Ork disappeared from the tent of his family one night when he was old, never to be seen by them again. But other tales told of orks in deadly crisis saved only by the appearance of a hoary but mighty old ork, a gaffer with more wrinkles than hairs, who strangely had no belly button. The First Ork, some maintained, still roamed the wastes, looking after his children, and from time to time he would come to their rescue with his wily tactics, wisdom, and subjugate their enemies with boundless cruelties. The full tale of the First Ork was kept from us children until the day of our maturity, which only made him a figure of more fascination for my sister and I.

Believing the tales that said the First Ork still walked the wide world, my sister and I would often go searching for him. We kept long watches on grim afternoons, scouting for lone orks making their way over the bare rock and fields of ginny grass. If we ever spotted solitary ork tracks out in the wilds, we would follow them. Most often, these tracks led to solitary Targalak wandering from camp, but once they led us to a different end entirely.

We were eight when this particular expedition to find the First Ork took place. We set off into the wastes at a march, passing grand tors scoured by sandstorms, and fording a muddy brown stream eating its way through the broken lands.

Mounting a cliff on the far bank, I discovered a hole in the rock big enough to swallow a warg and its rider whole. But the mysteries of the pit stretched beyond its size. The sides of the thing were lined with deep, three branched gouges, and its bottom was lined with bones. I gazed, wondering at the slaughter that must once have happened here. Brekazog saw me stopped and staring. She looked over my shoulder at the pit below and said, "Must be a crying spider hole."

"A crying spider?"

"Father told me about them. They're spiders the size of an ork, bigger sometimes if they're really old. They dig pits in the rock, and then cover them with a thin web. The web gets covered with sand and dust and soon enough it looks like the ground around it. When something walks on the web, it falls through into the spider's pit and that's that," Brekazog finished.

"Why's it called a crying spider?" I asked.

"Sometimes, when it is really hungry, it'll make noises like a woman crying. Father said he's even heard stories of crying spiders calling out ork names to get someone to come and investigate and fall in the hole."

I said, "That's madness! Animals don't speak Ork."

"Well that's the story father said he heard."

"How would a spider even have the throat for speaking a language like ours?"

"I don't know," Brekazog said, "but that's what father said he heard."

I was suddenly jealous to think of all the things that father was telling Brekazog that I was not deemed worthy of, and with two hearts beating in my chest, it can be difficult to keep emotion in check. I lashed out with, "Father's gone idiot if he thinks that's so."

"Father's not an idiot!" Brekazog said and gored the air with her tusks.

"Spiders don't talk!"

Brekazog stood strong. "Maybe when they eat an ork they can read what's in his head, or the language is in his blood or some such! We speak Ork and we eat ork, don't we?"