Unknown Day 1283 S.R.
"Garlakh!"
The call booms through the cacophonous clang of metal on stone, the swishcrack of whips on the backs of sluggish and unwilling snagae and their squeals of pain and fear. I drop the newly empty ore sack and wipe sweat from my brow only to see the mine boss waving me over to him as someone fills it again, though I don't see who at first. I approach. What else are you going to do when your boss calls, even if it feels like the 917th load today and your muscles seem to have all the strength of pond scum?
"Ya, boss?"
He points at the sack I'd just dropped, now freshly filled with iron ore and tied shut, the ropes made into handles. Nagluk's work, no doubt. Never seen anyone take such care with a knot other than him. Then he points to an even larger one that causes my arm, back and shoulders to groan in protest even without lifting it. He doesn't know or care, of course, and I know my place and don't mention it.
"Your shift's about up, ya? Take those two up to forge seven and call it a day. Don't be late tomorrow either."
"Ya, boss," I repeat, doing my best to keep the resignation out of my voice and off my face. It's easier than easy for him to miss it. My voice is always soft and nearly lost among this din. He watches me just long enough for me to acknowledge the order with word and nod, then his attention's gone again as he calls for one of the other ore carriers even as I stagger off with the two sacks, which are indeed as heavy as they looked.
My immature muscles strain and scream in protest I try to ignore. Forge seven is all the way at the other end of our territory. I'll get no dinner until I'm done and I take a risk stopping at a well just outside the mines for a good dousing with the bucket followed by drinking one. I take as long as I think I can safely get away with, but the sooner I deliver this load, the sooner no one will have a claim on me for a few precious hours. I shoot The Shaven Dwarf a longing look as I pass it, the coppery tang of bloodswill flowing out its door along with raucous drunken singing about the adventures of a raider in a Tark's village. Swill will have to wait, too. I pass several workshops where they carve up bone, wood and stone for weapon handles and the like. The forges are scattered around various mine entrances and it's rare for me to have to take a load this far. Strike that, it's never happened. I don't find out why it did today, either.
When I reach forge seven, I find myself thoroughly surprised even through my exhaustion. I've never taken the time to watch the smiths too closely. Usually the ones next to my usual mine want me to just drop the ore and go, but today, this one tells me to sit on the stool and allows me to rest, so I watch him. He's not my boss, but I'm used to following orders. He unties the knots closing both sacks and examines the ore, grunting in satisfaction. Then he takes a few chunks of it and puts it in the forge. The smell of melting rock and metal is acrid, but I find myself engrossed as I watch the smelting process. I don't notice that he's watching me watch the metal and noting my fascination until he speaks to me when the slag is cleared away and the ingot is cooling in its mold.
"Out with you, I'm done for the day," he says gruffly, though that's positively polite by the standards of our kind. I jump to my feet as if scalded and he laughs, a deep, hearty laugh that fills the room when I stumble and have to catch myself against the anvil. Though my mind forgot I was tired, my body did not and reminded me in no uncertain terms as my legs nearly gave out under me.
1283-mid 1301 S.R.
I skipped the swill that day in exhaustion and many more days after that in fascination. All the other smiths shooed me away when they caught me trying to watch, but never the one in forge seven. He worked nearly alone in the smallest forge, unlike the others that worked in cavernous rooms. He was accompanied only by a small, bulky goblin that tended the bellows. The smith told me to call him Dorishak. He hesitated before he gave me that, making me wonder if it was his real name. I decided it probably wasn't. Who would name their offspring glove? Sword, axe or bloodletter maybe, but glove? Dorishak he was ever to me, and if it was a false name as I suspect I didn't find out why he used it for several years. It turned out he was on bad terms with the chief and if not for his skill, would have been dead before I was born. For hours, days, months I watched him turn ore into ingots and ingots into suits of stout-looking mail, shields and helms. It was crude work as I later learned, but rarely did I see better equipped orcs until I started doing it myself.
For a couple of years I watched him, until one day his forge tender drank a few too many in the Dwarf, got into an ill-advised fight with one of the underbosses and lost an arm. I was, for only the second time, officially ordered to go to forge seven with a huge load of ore, and told not to come back to the mines for work the next day as my assignment was changing. Only then did I learn that Dorishak and the mine-boss were on uncommonly good terms for orcs, actually twin brothers, though blood ties are seldom publicly acknowledged in orcish society. Dorishak thought I might have a calling for his work and, ore carriers being rather easier to come by than truly skilled smiths, the mine boss reassigned me so I could be retaught.
The work was difficult but rewarding. Some days I spent with him learning to tend the forge and then to work the metal. Others I spent learning how to tan and work skins. Then, once I was competent with both, he taught me how to actually make protective gear. That was when I got my tribal scarring, when I officially took up the trade that would shape the rest of my life. A red hammer was branded and then colored on my cheek, and I've worn it proudly ever since.
Dorishak gave me a good deal of advice that has stood me in good stead in the years since, but the essential piece was "be the best at something the chief needs and you're set, even if you're captured". It was years before I learned just how crucial that was to living.
1301 S.R.
Grey Mountains
"Garl," Dorishak calls impatiently, "Go see what's keeping Nagluk.! Lazy snaga's four hours late with my ore!"
Dorishak has been in a black mood all day. He's been pacing and fretting, constantly looking outside as if expecting someone or something other than Nagluk, and I thought he was going to lash me when I overboiled that piece of cuir bouilli he had me try making. He's been working on perfecting the design for several weeks now and at the point where he's ready to pass it on to his understudy. A whip hangs on the wall, though I've seen him use it perhaps twice in the 15 or so years I've been working with him, both times on someone who was deliberately, blatantly disrespectful because of his bad blood with the warlord. I thought today was going to make number three, but he resisted the temptation.
I'm having a little trouble with temperature control. That's a drastic understatement similar to saying that if you chop my arm off, I'll bleed a little. My most recent failed effort sits beside me, a monument to that fact, looking like nothing so much as a shriveled half of malformed and undersized melon. It was supposed to be a helm. It might fit a rabbit, but not an uruk or even a goblin. I lay aside the piece I was cutting in preparation for another attempt and rise from my seat at the workbench. I'm in a bad mood, too, unusually for me. I'm normally pretty even-tempered, but if he snaps at me just once more … I don't know what his problem is today, but I'm happy to go for a walk lest I say something I'll regret.
No, that's not true, I do know what his problem is. I know exactly what his problem is. My failure with the cuir bouilli would usually be worth no more than a sigh, a few tips, perhaps a corrective clout on the shoulder if the mistake was one he found especially dumb and an order to try again. His problem is this spreading war going on between the warlord and his second. There's an ominous tension in the air as I cross the complex to the mines where I spent my first few years working. Everyone I pass looks at me hard as if expecting me to attack. I don't, but the same can't be said for many others in the tribe. It's been like this for a while, but today it has a sharper feel.
Am I the only one who thinks the lieutenant is an utter fool? The quick way to do this would have been to challenge the warlord personally and directly for his post, then fight it out publicly in a one-on-one combat, winner to take control of the tribe, loser to be beyond caring. That isn't what happened, though. He chose to involve the entire tribe in his bid for power. No one can feel safe. Anyone even suspected of sympathizing with either side is at risk of having his throat slit, a knife in his back, or an arrow in his eye. The warlord adopted similar tactics trying to get rid of any of those who wanted to usurp him, so it has become an untenable situation where the warlord's loyalists will do it to anyone thought to be supporting the usurper, and the usurper's lads will do it to any warlord loyalist they find. It can't go on like this. I'm a little surprised one of our neighbors hasn't come and taken us out while we're at each other's throats.
I've long since stopped going to the Dwarf for a drink after a day at work, going instead straight to bed. Sleeping lightly is the way to keep alive. There is no private space, all of us lined up in smelly, filthy pallets, but no one can say I support anyone if all I do is my job. Only Dorishak knows I still stand with the Warlord, but I don't know where he stands. I'm not dead yet, at least, so I guess that's something.
"Hey, mine-boss, have you seen Nagluk lately? He's got ore due for number seven and he's hours late," I keep my words terse when I reach the mines and find the mine-boss in the middle of directing the cleanup of a small cave-in. He's got no time for chatter, and he's never a chatterer anyway. We have that much in common.
"Probably slackin' off at the Dwarf again," he answers gruffly, indifferent to his missing ore lugger, and immediately returns to the more urgent problem at hand. I know Nagluk, though. That's not his style. He's as willing as any to have a drink or six after a long day, but not while he's got orders to be somewhere else. He used to be a slacker, but he got tired of being lashed for tardiness by the weaponsmith in number one or the mine-boss himself and shaped up. If the mine-boss weren't so distracted with his own problems, he'd probably remember that, but I don't ask again. I look around the cavernous area. No Nagluk anywhere. Just to prove my belief right or wrong, I go to the Dwarf. It's full of slacking and off-duty ore luggers, bone carvers, stone carvers, skinworkers, and warriors, but no Nagluk.
I leave the tavern and slide into a quiet side tunnel for a think. A fragment of a conversation comes to mind, Nagluk confessing to me he'd started taking the long way through side tunnels in hopes of avoiding the war. Suddenly it's like someone poured snow from the top of the mountain straight into my gut. I think this very tunnel would actually be on his route. Perhaps if I follow these to the forges again…
Halfway back I find him in a pool of his own guts and blood with a dagger bearing the usurper's symbol buried in him. The ore is still here in blood-stained sacks where it landed or was thrown against the wall in the fight, so I pick it up and continue. Dead orcs are as common as gravel these days, and who would I report it to anyway?
I don't make it back to the forge. Soon after the last side tunnel pours back into the broader main passages, There is a wide intersection that sometimes doubles as a meeting hall when the various smiths meet to haggle over ore allotments, talk designs or whatever else. It's always noisy and bustling, but today there is a pitched battle there. All of the smiths in the area have come out trying to defend their forges and it seems nearly impossible to tell who's who in the melee. Not all of us wear signs of allegiance to one or the other. It'd be dangerous to do so; it's something only the biggest and boldest do. I can't get around the fight, so I let the sacks slide to the floor. I guess there's no choice but to take a public stand now. I find someone wearing the warlord's insignia and fall in with him, and there I also have final confirmation that Dorishak and I are in agreement, even with the bad blood between him and the warlord. He's right next to me. I give him a toothy grin and draw my daggers, using them to gesture to the ore when he spots me. He nods, but there's no time for news or conversation and we wade into the fight. I see that ore again weeks later and in another place, though I don't recognize it as such because one piece looks much the same as another.
1301 to mid 1306 S.R.
Grey Mountains
It was my first major battle. The fight was utterly barbaric and brutal. The usurper's troops ended up winning that battle, but the warlord won the fight that mattered when he killed the usurper. Nonetheless he was assassinated that very night when he took the wrong sow to his nest, leaving a leaderless few alive. I was among them, but Dorishak had tried his luck against one of the best spearmen on the usurper's side and found himself not up to the task. There really was no longer a functional warband. Orcs wandered the tunnels alone or in small groups, some with a purpose and others not. I wandered the tunnels alone, aimless and with some nameless hollowness inside for weeks living off rats, bats, and cave lizards. There was no longer anything for me in forge seven, or for that matter anywhere in the tunnels of the Red Hammer.
As it happened, I reunited with some of the remnants of the Hammer in my next tribe, called the Silver Spears. There'd been a fragile peace between us and them during my lifetime. They knew about the fallout of the civil war. Some of the Hammer had gone to them willingly and others were captured. Four of their scouts finally caught me getting a drink of water and gave me an ultimatum to forge or die. There really was no choice. I don't know why, but I have always clung tenaciously to life and done what I had to to keep it. I agreed to forge. They needed me, so reluctant or not I was safe. None of those they'd captured from the Hammer were smiths and they had lost theirs to some odd creature that they said lived down a well. They tattooed their sign over my tribal scar to mark me as theirs, but didn't manage to get rid of it completely.
Their territory was smaller and not quite as rich with iron, so the miners ended up using the Hammer's old mines and they cannibalized our old place for anything else they needed. It had copper, but that's no good for armor. I did get to play with it a little when the brewer needed his still fixed. That took a day and no more. They brought a few specialized tools they hadn't had from forge seven and I got to more serious work. I kept Dorishak's design in mind, but didn't work on it yet. This chief had no time for experimentation.
Mid 1306 to late 1311 S.R.
Grey Mountains
My new chief was more ambitious than wise. He had rigid separations between his crafters and his warriors. He always had me making armor for way, way more uruks than he could possibly outfit. Maybe he thought it would impress the big tribe in Gundabad or make him look bigger to someone else. I barely left the forge even to train with the longknives and daggers I preferred for weapons. It ended up saving my life, as I was kept back in the forge when most of the warriors went out to raid some nearby Tarks with the warlord. It ended very badly indeed as I learned during a spar with my brother Garnog, who taught me how to use knives in the first place. Many of the warriors did not survive the raid, and the warlord's hide was used to decorate the gate to the tarks' village.
There was a time of debate in the significantly smaller tribe as the new chief and his underbosses decided what to do. Some wanted to perhaps tunnel deeper into the mountain for protection and to get space to increase their numbers by conscription, conquest and breeding with any female they could find. Some suggested there was no need to dig and the Hammer's old tunnels would do. However, the new chief made the incomprehensible decision to go across the plains. We all paid for his attempt to move the tribe. We ran into slavers from Dol Guldur and those of us not killed in the skirmish were captured and scattered in various sales throughout Mirkwood forest.