An Orc¿ #0454

--Readers of J.R.R.Tolkien have read of Orcs. Those being made and raised as fighting warriors beneath the Dark Lord's mountain. We have maybe read Stan Nicholls, and Mary Gentle, but here is a page of our history, retold in such a way as to make of Orcs, honoured beings who sadly or not, from differing points of view, could no longer contend in a world in which the magic of the Elder god's was giving way to new races and the turning of an age to a new God, who in His turn is passing too into legend in our times.
< Simon.T. >
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--''Hail now the holder of heaven's realm
That architect's might, His mind's many ways, Lord forever and father of glory,
Ultimate crafter of all wonders,
Holy Maker who hoisted the heavens
To roof the heads of the human race,
And fashioned land for the legs of man,
Liege of the world-born, Lord Almighty.
--And the darkness between the stars trembled . . .
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~Book Four.
--The Plain Of Chluain Tarbh, North Of Dubhlinn, Good Friday, April 23rd, The Year Of Our Lord 1014.
--The ravens gathered under a lightening sky, driving the birds of morning deep into hiding. From a rocky perch at the edge of Tomar's Wood, north of Dubhlinn, Grimner watched the flocks of wheeling black shapes staining the firmament, drawn by the promise of blood and slaughter. As he watched, he sang __ his voice like iron scraped across flint:
--Brothers shall strive and slaughter,
Sisters shall sin together;
Ill days among men:
An axe-age, a sword-age,
Shields shall be cloven;
A wind-age, a wolf-age,
Ere the world totters.
--Grimner squatted on his haunches; his shirt of antiquated iron rings gleamed with a fresh coat of grease. He wore trousers of leather, now, and heavy Danish boots taken from the spoils of Finegall. He carried his long seax sheathed at his waist, along with a bearded axe fitted with a curved haft a few spans longer than his knotty forearm. The helmet that rested on the rock beside him once belonged to a Norse chief; the iron had chasing of bronze, with a thick ridge that came down to a heavy nasal carved with a wolf's head. A crest of black horsehair hung from a socket at the peak of the helm. A spear he had, too, and a limewood shield, banded and bossed in cold wrought iron, that bore on its blackened face the fresh-painted sigil of the chiefs of Orkahaugr in the Kjolen Mountains : the red eye of Bálegyr.
--Grimnir sang on.''
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--The veneer of the Orc, popularized via fantasy literature, inexorably cracked and flaked away. What remained was the fabled kaunar. They existed, and their legend spread as the garbled retelling of an older cycle of myths that crossed multiple cultures - - with a memory of them found in in the creature Grendel from Beowulf, an echo of them in the Girlfriend of Irish legend, even a parody of them in the kallikantzaroi of medieval Greek fairy tales.
--And this the result. A book - - that book -- about a vengeance-minded kaunr whose DNA was laid down by Tolkien; an Orc who is never explicitly called an Orc -- though the Anglo-Saxons might label him orcnéas, while the Dane's might name him skraelingr, and the Irish will forever curse his name as one of the hated fomóraig . . .
--Here, in the end, I can only hope I did as I intended and redeemed the Orc. But whether I did or not -- or whether I fell flat and lost the plot entirely -- I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to decide.
< Scott Open. Decatur, AL 10 Au'gust 2016. >
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--This magnificent work entitled, 'A Gathering of Ravens', is for the discerning reader, a pebble fallen in a still pool of unknowledge, the rippling of which will be seen in all future literature of Orcs.
--There is very little that I can say, except this 'must read' should be given such a holiday as this long w/e for absorption - back to Scott Oden - ''He is called Corpse-maker, The Bringer Of Night . . . And He Is The Last Of His Kind.''
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--Roll on - George Lucas, - please, pretty please etc.