The Tempering

by Shannon Lee Martin

  * * *

  A week passed, and a slightly-plumper, healthier Groth the orken blacksmith was conducted to the audience hall of king Grathulus III, the blind king of the southern human kingdom of Dunsin. He and the chief medic and a contingent of twenty royal guards waited for what seemed like hours outside the throne room's towering iron doors. Groth stood there the entire time with a prideful arch to his back, watching the torchlight glimmer off the polished armor of the guardsmen, smiling at one or another of them every time one of their faces would grimace with hatred at the arrogant orc, baring his blunt yellow teeth to the ones whose hands went to their sword hilts.

  "Humans are stupid," he growled once arrogantly with his voice now a healthy, throaty grunt, but the blow to the back of his head by the chief medic took a little of his cockiness away. Still, Groth was proud of the way the humans had flinched and shuffled when the comment was made, and smiled defiantly while he rubbed the back of his head and the guardsmen laughed. His shoulders never slumped once.

  At last, the blare of a dozen trumpets sounded pridefully, triumphantly, and the double iron doors swung swiftly inward and clanged loudly into what sounded like iron clasps on the other side. At that same time, the fanfare of the trumpets died away, and as Groth was escorted into the throne room, the trumpeters were filing away quickly into doors on both sides of the monumental chamber; not monumental in size, though the chamber was impressively large, but monumental for the towering stonework on display -- the statues and other stonework of the throne room of King Grathulus III was of such a stunning quality of craftsmanship and artistic mastery that Groth, the simple and humble blacksmith, found his surroundings more than a little overwhelming.

  But on a second look. . .the statues were of nothing but humans, and human buildings, and human war machines. Hatred replaced awe, and the brief inadequate smallness he'd felt in such opulent surroundings seemed to have fled indefinitely. But where was the king? Was this not supposed to be the throne room? And then, at the far end of the chamber, he noticed the small stone door with the rough-carved death-head skull that filled most of the door's space. In the dark space that filled the pits of the stone skull's eyes, two bright fiery flames surged to life, and the door slowly opened.

  "Let the orc enter alone!" a coarse impatient voice yelled, and the chief medic pushed the orc forward even as he was backing away. The soldiers stood as still as the stone around them in the places they'd assumed inside the chamber, and not a single one of them shifted so much as a single eyelid, it seemed.

  Groth was impatient to see his doom to its end. He walked forward proudly, shoulders still straight, and boldly entered past the skull-carved door with the fiery dancing eyes.

  The room was dark like a midnight without fire or a moon. The stone door slammed closed with a dull grating thump behind him. Without being conscious of it, the orc again felt fear. The room somehow smelled of musky death mixed with rotting decay. Then suddenly, without even the slightest bit of warning at all, the small chamber he was in was softly aglow in red torchlight, and the orc almost fainted, almost screamed, reeled a bit, and muttered a shuddering "Death be damned," and focused his attention on the only other being present in the room. Sitting before him, on a clear-lacquered throne of skulls and femurs and backbones and ribs, on a foot-thick obsidian dais in the room's center, sat a huge, thickly-muscled ebon-black man that must have been eight feet tall whenever he stood. Groth thought he might be able to stand as high as the man's navel if he stretched on his toes. The teeth in the towering man's almost humorless smile were as pure white as polished ivory. His bald-black head gleamed with a dull shine, and over his eyes, just like the crest of his flags and soldiers, his guardsmen and his stone halls, a rag that looked as if it were dyed with blood was tied tightly around what might have been empty sockets. He wore only one item of clothing more than the lean-belted loincloth that was all that Groth ever wore -- sandals that looked as if they were molded to his feet. Except for the leather straps, to Groth's experienced eyes, the sandals' soles and the ornaments imbedded in the straps seemed to be carved of pure gold.

  But none of that was what caused Groth to temporarily swoon. All around the round, red-painted chamber that surrounded King Grathulus III and his death-limbed throne lay the remains of all manner of not too recent, neither too long-gone dead humans, their decayed bodies left to rot where they'd fallen, some even hanging from rough iron spikes and hooks on the wall. The red ceiling was covered with white-painted stylized skulls, of a variety of humanoid beings.

  "Fear not little orc," Grathulus's harsh battered voice boomed all at once, his eyeless stare somehow pinning Groth to the floor. "I mean you and your people no harm. Did you ever hear that sort of thing before you were brought here?" The blind king tilted his heavily-lined head in curiosity, and though he was blind, and Groth could not see his eyes, his cloth-bound stare bore a hole through Groth's brain.

  The king's comment caught Groth off guard. He had been full of bold words only moments before, but now his thoughts seemed to be stunned into silence. He shook off his confusion.

  "What?" Groth bellowed with all the power his lungs could give him, but if the king could not see his confusion, he could certainly hear it.

  "My kingdom is at war with orc-kind. This thing is true. But I conquered this kingdom long before you were ever born, and no half-human dragon-spawn is going to take it from me. He has tricked your peoples into helping him fight a war against me. Why, I ask myself, but I can find no answers. I can only defend what is rightfully mine. Do you know much of the politics between our peoples, orcsmith?" Again, that tilt to his head, that hole-boring feeling from nonexistent peepers.

  Confusion almost totally overwhelmed Groth, but he managed to answer anyway. "As you know -- how you can tell me if you like -- I am but a blacksmith. I am from a simple village that has sent many fine orken youth to fight in Gogalath's armies, and in these days of war I make swords to kill you humans, and shields to defend precious orken life, and armor to defend the lives of the orcs who are commanders in mighty Gogalath's armies. I do not know why we fight you humans. I only know that we are, and for once we are not yet beaten. If only I had a sword, I would kill you myself, so that the war might sooner be done with, and for once, my people would be the conquerors. But I have no sword to kill you with, and I am not fool enough to attack you without one. What do you say to that, mighty leader of human slugs?"

  "What can I say? You call me a leader of slugs. Here in my own throne room, you call my people slugs. But you have the right to your opinions, and with that right you can die for them." For a brief instant, the blind king's smile was malicious, a smile that said he'd like nothing more than to cut the orc down where he stood and cut out his heart and smash it against the red walls. The king's smile of feral bloodlust then turned to a frown, then back to the smile with the small glint of humor.

  "Sit down orc. I have a story to tell you. Don't look so defiant. The longer I talk, the longer you live. Do you find a flaw with that logic?" The orc stared on with contempt, then went to sit against the wall beneath one of the red-flamed torches.

  "I see you have a desire to live a few moments longer, at least. But you will not die today, orc."

  Groth jumped to his feet, fear in his eyes, ready to bolt. "You're about as blind as my ass has eyes. How in the Dark Gods hell do you know if I sat down or not? I don't know what all this talking has to do with torturing me, but you can bet with heavy odds that I kill myself with one of these broken bones before Groth the Blacksmith is tortured by a bunch of dwarf-lovin' humans with a king that thinks he can scare people by telling them what they're doing while he pretends he's blind!" The orc picked up a jagged bloodstained bone and put it to his neck.

  "Kill yourself if you want to, orcsmith, but there is no reason for you to die. You are right about one thing, though. I can see, in my own way." The king took off his blindfold, and the orc gasped with shock. The king's eye sockets were empty
except for the grey burn scars that covered the hollows of the skull. "I can hear almost everything you're doing. . .Groth, so please sit back down, no one's going to torture you today, either."

  Groth sat back down, and the blind king re-wrapped the cloth about his hollow, scarred eye sockets.

  "Do you know the story of how I gained my kingdom, orc, and lost the one I had before this one?"

  "No. Orcs don't concern themselves with the histories of humans. But since I have nothing better to do, I'll listen."

  "You touch my heart, orc. If you only knew how you've touched me." The king's smile grew bigger, deeply etching the lines of his face, but what little trace of humor it had borne melted away. "Now listen very closely orc, so you won't have to ask questions later if you have any."

  "You can call me Groth," the orc said with a gleeful sneer. He'd noticed how straining it had seemed earlier when the king said his name, and he thought to goad the king in some way.

  Grathulus ignored the orc. "I will tell you the short version, if you wish."

  "Tell your story however you like."

  "So be it. There's not much to it, unless I told you unimportant details, but I once ruled the kingdom to the north, and when I conquered this land I now rule, I was betrayed by many supposedly loyal to me, and armies were brought into my country in secret from some of the surrounding countries. When I tried to return to my kingdom, in victory, I, and the small detachment I had with me, barely managed to escape and return to the bulk of my army before we were hit by a horde at least twice my conquering army's size. I had thought it was the bloodiest defensive battle I would ever fight in, but with the war we have now, I know now that I was wrong.

  "We barely had time to form a strategy, and we were outnumbered, but the men the north sent against me were from countries of inferior war abilities. We slaughtered enough of them that they didn't bother me for a while after. I had intended at the time to gather a force large enough to take my old country back, but I had to consolidate my newly won lands first, and it wasn't nearly as easy as it would have been before I'd been so bitterly betrayed. When I finally did have a force large enough to retake what was mine, I had my first encounter with orcs. It was then when I understood why this country had fell so easily to me. It's not easy fighting two wars at once.

  "Before I was king of this land, even before I inherited my old kingdom in the north, this country was plagued by war with orcs. I was a much younger man then, with a much sharper mind for strategy, and soon. . . Wake up orc!. . .and soon your kind became no real problem to deal with, and their attacks greatly lessened. But by the time I learned how to deal with orcs -- I even made peace with a few orken chiefs -- the country to the north whose name I shall never speak again -- "

  "Kolndra?" the orc interjected happily (suppressing a yawn), but when the eyeless stare of the king sat on him a while without even his almost humorless smile, the orc's own smile faded, and his pig-like nostrils flared briefly with resignation.

  Grathulus continued. "I could not take my country back. Its armies had become too powerful, and in a brief skirmish we had, I could tell that at least my war policies were still intact. I guess you could say my own warcraft and statesmanship worked against me. The head traitor, who somehow managed not to become a puppet of those who financed my overthrow seemed, at the time, content with what he'd stolen, but I still plotted revenge.

  "I really wish now, in a way, that I hadn't had that son of a whore assassinated. A general took his place. A general who likes war almost as much as I once did. He conquered the countries east and west of him, and now he plans to war with me as well as a country to the north. If I wasn't fighting this damned orc war, I would give that arrogant bastard more of a fight than he could handle. But as things stand, half of my forces stand ready on the north border preparing for another defensive war. I know that if my war with Gogalath is not soon finished, I and my country are doomed. I, of course, do not plan to lose another country, to anyone.

  "But I've gotten off the subject. Do you know of the first great orc war? The one with humans?"

  "No, I'm a stupid orc without ears or knowledge of my own people," Groth snorted.

  "You will have to excuse me. It has been quite a while since I have had direct personal dealings with orcs, and it seems my old mind may have collected a few prejudices in that long time. That is part of why you are here, but we will get to that in a short moment, will we not?"

  The orc did not respond. Grathulus continued.

  "Well, you know of the war, but do you know who started it?"

  "Let me guess. You're going to blame it on orcs again, aren't you? It's always the orcs fault. An orc can do no good. Orcs are the embodiment of evil. Something along those lines?"

  "You're the most well-spoken orc I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Well traveled or well read. Which is it?"

  "A little of both. Words gathered from books, skills acquired abroad, experience gained from both. One thing that has never changed is my personal hatred for humans and dwarves. Finish your speech."

  The blind king's jaw clenched fiercely, the muscles of his entire body tightening noticeably. His lips curled to a disgusted sneer, but as quickly as his anger surged it was just as quickly eased. He took a long, deep breath, and when he exhaled it looked as if all his energy had fled. The Blind King looked drawn, worn, and for the first time he looked his old age.

  "I can see that you are not going to be easy to deal with, but I must try my best. I was going to say that it was the dwarves that started that war, it was the dwarves that I had decent diplomatic relations with, it was the dwarves that came to me for help. But it was the orcs that cut off their dealings with me, the orcs who would not negotiate peace. So it was the dwarves I allied myself with, and it was because of my help that the dwarves won their war, and it is because of that very war that I and the dwarven kingdoms are allies.

  "Now, you tell me why you think the orcs cut off all their ties to me." The Blind King's tone was one that would not accept any more foolishness. Groth knew this when he answered.

  "I wasn't anywhere near being born when that war was being fought, but if you knew very much about my people, you would've known that our hatred of dwarves runs deeper than our hatred for being tortured, or starved, or being deprived of sex. Since you deal with dwarves, you can be nothing but the enemy of orcs. Orcs have never really cared for human-kind anyway, but now we really hate you, and your slugs, and your worm-infested dwarven pets. Do you need that put any clearer?" The look on the orc's face was one of acceptance, that he knew he was about to die.

  "No orc, today is not your day to die. Calm down. Respin, bring this orc some water. Now!"

  In mere seconds after Grathulus issued his command, Groth heard the grinding of stone against stone. He stood to look, walked a little to the left of the throne, and watched as a wide segment of the thick stone wall separated itself from the rest of the wall. The wall section cracked open wide enough for a man to walk through, and the tall brown man in black, with the many-bound grey braids Groth had seen the day he'd been taken from his bleak dungeon cell, walked calmly through it. He wore a pleasant smile on his face, and carefully handled the goblet of water in his outstretched hands.

  Respin said, in a rolling mild voice with a strange lilt, "Here is the water for the orc as you commanded, lord Grathulus." The man kicked some bones out of his way as he approached the orc, and sat the goblet down next to Groth. He bowed to Grathulus, and left the chamber as he'd entered it. The door slowly grated closed behind him.

  Groth sniffed the water, wet his clawed hand to wipe his face, and downed the rest in a quick gulp.

  "Thanks, oh mighty blind one. You were saying?"

  "I guess I was trying to say, in my own roundabout way, that I wish to war with you orcs no longer. Now tell me, do you really hate my kind so much that you would see your own people killed in the process of killing mine?"

  Groth's thoughts seemed to blur for a slight moment,
but when his head cleared, he mumbled, "Well, if you look at it that way, no, I don't hate you so much that I would see my people die just because you exist. All humans, alive or dead, aren't worth the life of a single orc in the least bit. Why am I here?"

  "My thoughts are simply this, Groth; I wish to make peace with the orcs, and I am prepared to cut off diplomatic relations with all the dwarven kingdoms throughout the world. Do you think that would be enough?" His smile was sly.

  "No," said Groth bluntly. "It would be no if I believed you or not, which I don't."

  "Think about why you are here."

  "I have. I still think I'm here to die."

  "You are here to be the instrument of peace."

  ". . . Excuse me?"

  "You are here because I wish to make peace with all orken kind, and because dwarves are the vile creatures all orcs know them to be. This is true in the very fact that it was dwarves who started this war, just like the last one and all the ones before it, and I am forced by treaty of alliance to fight by their side. If I had known all those long years ago that an alliance with dwarves would cost me endless wars with orc-folk, I would have led my armies personally, as I did in those days, in alliance with all the orken clans, to totally wipe Dwarven kind from the face of the earth! In all that time I have not been able to make contact with a single orken chieftain, and now, for no apparent reason, they wish to destroy me. That will not happen. That will not happen." Grathulus took in a deep lungful of air and let it out slow, his entire body covered in sweat.

  Groth had been about to make some derogatory comment about the quality and content of the king's speech, but again his thoughts blurred, turned, twisted, changed into something completely different, and blurred again. He said, "How can I, a simple blacksmith, help to make peace between we orcs and mankind? I still don't see your point." For a brief moment, a wondering thought entered Groth's brain, but it disappeared before it could even form, and in that brief time of fleeting thought, he did not notice the eyeless glare of pure hatred, total glee, complete triumph that crossed the king's brooding visage. When he again looked on Grathulus, the king's look was one of hope.

  Grathulus flicked a finger in the orc's direction, and an overwhelming wave of dizziness engulfed Groth. He fell to his knees, squeezing his head as one might a giant zit. After he coated a few bones with a nice puddle of chunky green, he croaked, "Water. . .more water. . ."

  "Of course, of course." Again the hidden stone door opened and again braid-headed Respin brought a goblet of water for Groth, which he drained with a deep gulp.

  "Can you hear me, Groth?" asked Grathulus. "It seems my chef is not so good at cooking for orken palates. Something, of course, will be done about that."

  Groth said nothing. If he wasn't in a trance, it was something close to it.

  "Groth. . .Groth. . .you will, for peace between our peoples, fashion a sword. You will be given the finest materials to work with, but you must fashion it alone. You will have assistants, but only you must touch the sword until it is completed. Once it is ready for its final tempering, you will hand it over to me. No one else must touch the sword." Grathulus snapped his fingers with a gesture, and Groth snapped immediately to attention, his every sense alert and pulsing with vitality.

  "Wh. . .what the hell happened to me? I. . .I. . . You mentioned something about peace?"

  "Yes. Peace between orc and man. As soon as you said to me, 'What a wonderful idea,' you fainted."

  "I said that?" he paused, and tilted his head slightly. "I. . . I must have. It seems like a wonderful idea to me. So what's the problem? It must be your food. It stinks."

  "I'll speak to the chef," said Grathulus. "Now, knowing of your skill at the forge, you were brought to this palace, but when it comes down to it, I can't think of a single thing that would be good as a gesture of peace between our two warring nations. What do you think, hmn? A pot, perhaps, or maybe golden horseshoes for the steed of your mighty emperor Gogalath, or perhaps -- "

  "A sword," said Groth suddenly.

  "What's that?"

  "A sword would be a perfect idea. I. . . I'll forge a sword. I. . . What in the hell will a sword. . .I. . . I'll forge a sword. Yes. A sword."

  "A sword of peace sounds like a fine idea indeed. An excellent idea of yours, Groth, excellent! I'll provide you with. . ." The conversation continued on with what would be needed to form what would, with certainty, be the best sword Groth would attempt to forge in his entire career as a blacksmith. At first, Groth had more than a few doubts, but after a few more goblets of water, the only thought on Groth's mind was to create his masterpiece -- a sword that would bond two nations together in peace, a sword that would symbolize the end of the wretched dwarves, and it would be all because of his skills -- even the humans knew of his master craftsmanship! -- and he would be written about in many sagas to come. Some part of him rejected these notions, and almost gagged him with its silly idealism, but. . .

  "Well, Groth, I hope for your work to go well. We'll speak again soon," said Grathulus. The door Groth entered opened, and Respin awaited him on the other side to escort him to his new rooms. The room he was to sleep in was connected to the room with the forge, but the forge would wait. Groth was tired, he needed to sleep. . .