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I've reach a bit of an impasse, here. I've become rather ambivalent about this story, no longer sure if it's good or terrible, and I've reached a point where continuing with it would entail a goodish amount of work and maybe a little research. You see, it's set in the Warcraft universe, which I know almost nothing about (I played the hell out of WC2 about a million years ago, and a bit of WC3).
So hey, if you've got a few minutes, maybe you can check this out and drop me a line or two. Any comments (and I do mean any) are severely appreciated.
— Fill’r up ya wuthlus kep! Guts said. He slammed his empty tankard on the bartop and a rill of yellow foam jumped from the rim and slapped the scarred oak. — A warrior’s gorh is to the top, to the very-very, and I’m a warrior if there ever was one. So you fill’r, ya wuthlus kep, ya bastid boy of a halfbreed hoor, and smile when ya do it.
A trio of greenskins took up a chant, pummelling the bartop with the flats of their callused palms, screaming — A waryer’s gorh, a waryer’s gorh!
The bartop shook and buckled. A crack scrawled its way across the wood and the trio roared and laughed and guzzled their tankards dry, the beer splashing down their chins and soaking their shirts.
— Guts! Guts! Guts!
The bartender spat on the floor. He swore under his rancid breath and sneered and poured Guts’s drink. To the top, to the very-very. — Here y’are, ya thanklus sod. Now get back to yer table, wouldja? Yer rilin the idjits.
The trio laughed and pelted the bartender with their empty iron tankards.
Guts took his drink back to his table, pushing aside a pair of brawling orcs and ruining a game of Cut’m by slapping one of the competitors across the back of the head. The brownrusty blade of the dagger shot through his palm in a glut of dark blood, but when he twisted his head over and saw Guts standing there, his anger evaporated. He smiled toothily at him, yanking the dagger from his flesh and licking the blade.
— Good’un, Guts. Ever good.
— Yar.
The wooden legs groaned when Guts sat on his chair. Even for an Orc he was large, perhaps four hundred pounds, most of it gnarled muscle. His chest was a latticework of scars, loped swordwounds and deep axewounds and more than a few bulletwounds, black puckered holes on his breast, the brass slugs still buried there. And his belly: a mountain range of abdominals. The crisscrossing scars on his face twitched as Guts tipped his mug and drank deeply. Behind him, an orc raised a squealing piglet by the leg and, to roaring approval, chomped off its head and swallowed it in a single gulp. The pink carcass jittered and the blood came down in a shower.
— A good day, wa? Guts said to the orc sitting next to him, an old comrade, another waryer.
— Wa, said Kryn. He fingered the wyvern’s tooth he wore on a gut string around his neck, his other hand clamped around a tankard he had no real intentions of finishing.
Some of the good humour left Guts. This was as close to solemn as he ever got. To Kryn, it just looked like Guts was itchy.
— Yer brother, Guts said, — he fought with his heart a-singing. This was a good day for him, his best even, so I say ya do some enjoyin. Ya drink a warrior’s gorh for Treim, ya do.
— My brother, Kryn said, — caught a mortar to the face. His skullbox blew like a volcano and his brains rolled down his chest like burger. He dropped twitchin to the snow, no face left for him to scream out of, pissing himself. He chopped part of his own leg with his cleaver. And you say this was his best day?
— Yar. Yar, that I do. He battled brave, yer brother, and he earned his legacy.
As the snow fell and the battle thickened, as the sky sang with cannon fire. The smoke and the raw gleams of iron and brass and burnished gold, horses whinnying and pine nettles scurrying greenly across the powder. His brother torn apart, and the considerable mess he made; his only legacy.
All of a sudden Kryn was thirsty. He poured his drink down his gullet, the beer sluicing between the ivory spikes of his teeth.
— Good! Guts said. — Treim’d be a-proud!
Kryn stroked the tooth lying against his chest. He thought: Now that was a good day. Thinking: Autumn in the yellow-red-orange of the forest with Treim and a band of four others. Death that day for them that day, for them and not us, a tooth each for us. The wyvern’s blooded gift.
When Kryn had knelt by his headless brother (the snow whipping around them, green nettles caught in the dark corona of gore), the tooth Treim wore was shattered, the white splinters fused to his flameblistered skin. These terrible details to remember. These sad stories played out in miniature.
Guts left for another round. Kryn heard him heckling the bartender, slapping the oak bar. Riling the idjits. The chant bloomed from drunklimbered maws (a waryer’s gorh a waryer’s) and it was like a thousand chittering insects under his skin.
A waryer.
— Guts! called a grizzled old foot soldier with a matted beard and a chunk out of his face, like a crater. — Hero of the field! Howmanyja get, Guts lad?
O what strangeness in the theatre of war, beyond the razorcalm moments of the battalions assembled and gazing downfield, their weapons twitching in their gloved hands: curved blades that winked in the winter light, granite mauls, gold constellations of rings and piercings; creaks of leather, clacks of steel, and the grunting hush of the wolves breathing hot steam. The ropes groaning on the catapults. The billow of canvass flags.
Calm and quiet and then O what strangeness.
There was Treim, yes, but there was also a dozen others, ten dozen others as the red tide of battle crashed down on them. They had stormed the dwarven camp at first light, first using the catapults to punch a hole through the wooden defence-wall, a hole big enough for the green rush of bloodthirsty orcs, then angling catapults to bombard the nexus of the camp, the burning missiles arcing the squelched socket of the sky like comets, the ripsounding roar of their destruction, the fires, the blackacrid smoke.
Guts took the first wave into the camp, Kryn the second. By this time the dwarves had rallied and commenced their retaliation, shelling the third wave with mortarfire. That was Treim’s battalion, and though Kryn felt a deep wrenching in his heart, like it had slipped from its mooring, he never looked back.
There would be time later for mourning.
Kryn cut from his battalion to climb a stone watchtower. He made his way quickly up the wooden ladder, his axe dangling by its rawhide string at his hip. He rolled into the roofed look, seeing the black cannon on its oiled swivel, a canvas bag of powder beside it, and an empty crate of shot by that. He cast his eyes back to the camp, and amid the chaos he noticed a squad of dwarves scurrying from a shop, bearing heavy crates on their backs. They broke off into small teams of two or three, heading for the towers.
Good.
Kryn pulled a red banner from his satchel and waved it to the catapults massed at the threshold of the snowy forest. Luckily it caught the eye of the siege commander, who waved back at Kryn with a red scarf. That was also good; they wouldn’t smash the tower until he was overtaken.
That cared for, Kryn flattened himself in the far corner, as hidden as possible in the cramped look. He untied his axe and ran his thumb along the blade. A weal of blood. Sharp as his father’s tongue.
He spared a single thought to his brother. A lament.
Before long he heard the cannoneers making their way up the ladder, under heavy rifle cover. The towers were perhaps their best chance to beat back the greenskins; with enough of them manned they could scatter the catapults like kindling and knock great bloody holes in the offensive charge.
— Putcher back innit, boy-o! one of the cannoneers said over the din of rifle fire. They were close now, almost to the look. — We gut work doin! Gut greeners tae barsh an bluud tae spill an a herty quaff when this be done!
The two dwarves climbed into the look and dropped their payloads. They were halfway through prying open a crate when they noticed Kryn, and by then it was far too late. He took the first with his axe, sinking the blade deep in the surprised dwarf’s chest, hearing the glorious crunch and the holler and the glutdrenching sound of fresh flowing blood, that ancient ode to mortal ruin. The other would-be cannoneer grabbed for the pistol tucked under his belt but Kryn was on him in an instant, pummelling him, his axe still wedged in the other’s chest, the other who was now fallen and writhing and drumming his feet.
Kryn bashed the struggling canoneer’s head against the railing, once, twice, the dwarf’s knotty brow fissuring in cracks of red and his mouth opening to scream and on the third bash a handful of his teeth exploding from his gums. He choked on these nubs of bone as Kryn picked him up and pitched him over the side and spared not another thought to him, for he had a cannon to arm.
And arm it he did. By that point the dwarves had noticed the orc in the tower. Bullets buzzed and pinged all around him in sporadic bursts, ricocheting off the bricks, tearing holes in the wooden roof and send showers of splinters onto his head and arms. The electric taste of fear in his mouth, his ears ringing from the noise, all his muscles tight and shaking; he worked through the panic that swelled in him, swelled like a thundercloud or a boil threatening to burst; he loaded the powder and the scarred iron ball and he tamped it down with his fist, a rifle slug screaming past his ear, another smashing against the cannon and making it ring like a bell.
With a mighty grunt, Kryn swivelled the cannon on its rusty track so it pointed into the camp. He lit the fuse by clapping a wedge of flint and iron pyrite, angling the weapon at the largest group of dwarven gunners that assailed him, around eight of twelve of them. Looking into the giant black bore, they lost their nerve and scattered and Kryn tracked them, the fuse hissing and sputtering until the cannon roared thunder and belched smoke and bucked back on the groaning swivel, all Kryn’s senses overwhelmed by the heat and stench and flash of it, the smoke and shriek, the responding dull clap as the ball scored the earth and tossed dirt and rocks and bodies into the air.
He knew he had only a few moments before the dwarves shelled their own tower. Though he was still blind and deaf and dazzled, he groped for the bag of powder and poured it in the sizzling mouth of the canon, a fresh ball on top of it; he packed it down and his arms seared when they rubbed against the hot iron. One more. One last shot before the mortars blew him into a pinkish mist.
The grey haze was lifting from his eyes, like flowers blooming in reverse. He swivelled the cannon on its rusty track and aimed it at the nearest watchtower. As he made the necessary corrections to his angle, Kryn could feel the artillery zeroing in on him from every point of the compass; in his head, he saw the trajectories they painted, the two other cannons, the dozen mortars, the countless rifles. The end product looked like a spiderweb, with him in the middle as the helpless fly. No matter. He would do as he could.
He lit the fuse. Over the barrel of the cannon, he saw the dwarves in the watchtower across from him abandon their weapon. They streamed down the ladder in a panicked rush, one falling off and landing on a wheelbarrel with a crash even Kryn could hear. Nevertheless, he took their advice and swung over to his own ladder, thinking there might be hope for his life yet.
He managed to make it halfway down the rungs before the world stopped making any type of coherent sense.
O strangeness.
Later, when his head finally cooled from the rush and battle-hysteria, he would piece the events together like so:
First his cannon fired. Seeing how he aimed it half-blind, Kryn had very little hope of actually hitting his mark. More than likely, his shot would sail over or beside the tower and bash safely into the surrounding forest. And he was somewhat right, though in the most lucky of ways: the cannon was not angled too hide or too wide, but a few degrees too low, and the ball smashed not into the look but a dozen feet below it, obliterating a good portion of the curved wall and sending the entire edifice into a tottering plummet, where it eventually smashed a bunker with six dwarves holed up inside.
But Kryn could not savour this victory, however; in fact, he had no clue of it, for a split moment after his cannon erupted, a volley of mortar shells rained down on his tower like wailing demons from the sky, ripping it to pieces. Kryn was thrown the rest of the way down the ladder (the ladder which was no more than a few flaming sticks at this point), hitting the ground with a dull, chestrattling thud, rubble falling down around him… though, miraculously, not on him. He was pelted with a few bricks and a sizeable chunk of the roof, but all that would be left from these hits were bruises.
His cannon landed a foot by his head. It sunk a foot into the earth and belched one final stream of smoke, as if in surrender.
Amid all the confusion, Guts was able a rally a fresh squadron and storm the barracks. When he emerged from it, he was bathed in blood and carrying the dwarven captain’s head. He held the gruesome trophy by its sweaty hair, the mouth lolling open and the eyes wide and the neck dripping meat. It was enough to make the last of the dwarves lay down their arms and surrender.
Guts lined up the prisoners and executed them personally. He was the hero of the siege, after all, the captain killer, so this was his right.
Eventually someone realized Kryn was still alive, and drug him back to the orc encampment in the forest.
Just read through chapters 1 and 2 and liked it. It took a little effort to get into it, with the heavy slang of the orcs, but once I got the hang of it, it read easily. Didn't quite understand what you were doing in the first part of Chapter 1 with the dashes and the no quotes, but it wasn't a problem. I found the bit with the wyvern's tooth and the that was a good day especially appealing.
I think I liked chapter 1 a bit more, in particularly the rough and rowdy atmosphere of the orc-pub. In chpater 2 you didn't quite convince me of the "O strangeness". Kryn did get his bell rung severly, but I guess I was expecting something a bit more eerie or mystical. However the action was superbly done. Don't know if you were targeting WC2 or 3, but I pictured the little catapults from WC2 twitching around, and the cannon towers from that game too.
As usual I thought the writing was excellent and, in summary, would be more than happy to read more. (As long as you don't leave us hanging in The Art of Killing, that is.) I did not detect any obvious foreshadowing, so I'm curious where you would go from here.
I know there are two parts, but I like to take it slow. This'll cover the first.
I was thrown at first by the lack of quotation marks, the many misspelled and unfamiliar words. But you break the rules well; everything is clear despite the roomless housing of dialogue and description, and the only thing I remain confused about is how exactly Cut'm is played. I'm not sure I want to know. Can't be very complicated if orcs do it.
"A warrior's gorh is to the top, to the very-very, and I'm a warrior if there ever was one."
Lines like this one are why I love the printed word. It would be so easy for an actor to botch the delivery, but in my mind it's perfect. And in my mind I spent the story, thanks to description like this - "The bartender spat on the floor. He swore under his rancid breath and sneered and poured Guts's drink." - and everything about Triem, Kryn's brother.
"A waryer, Kryn reckoned, was an orc who lived.
Chant: Gorh to the very-very!
A dead one was just another carcass."
Quite possibly my favorite type of ending. The dramatic equivalent of a punchline. It ties up the piece nicely while leaving room to continue.
"Autumn in the yellow-red-orange of the forest with Treim and a band of four others. Death that day for them that day, for them and not us, a tooth each for us."
The grammar is loose and sloppy throughout, but only this gave me pause. Did you mean to repeat "that day"?
When Kryn had knelt by his headless brother (the snow whipping around them, green nettles caught in the dark corona of gore), the tooth Treim wore was shattered, the white splinters fused to his flameblistered skin. These terrible details to remember. These sad stories played out in miniature.
I dunno why, I just don't like the word miniature in a fantasy setting. I guess it makes sense in something like Alice In Wonderland or some Swiftian work or what have you, but it usually just brings to mind cell phones and warhammer, so I, yeah, this is obviously not necessarily a comment relevant to your story so I'll end it now.
Anyway there's something about the use of "very-very" that strongly reminds me of A Clockwork Orange (the book, I've never seen the movie), it sounds as if it's exactly the same as one of Burgess' broken phrases, although I know it can't be identical...I think he used something like "krovy krovy," all the time, in any case a comparison between his story and yours is most likely only complimentary, I'm sure. If anyone wants a lesson in how to break the english language, I'd recommend that book, it does more heinous things to the written word than, say, 1337 5|*34|<.
Oh and hyphonated dialogue is cool. I tried doing something without quotation marks a couple forum wipes ago, and at the time people were quite hesitant about it too. Anyway I doubt that this place is in any way too good for non-quotationed work, so rock on and whatnot.
edit: I also agree that first chapter is better than the second. Or if that isn't accurately the express opinion of the previous responders, then I just submit for your contemplation that the first chapter is better than the second, rather than agreeing that it is so.
In chpater 2 you didn't quite convince me of the "O strangeness".
Doesn't much convince me either, sadly. I really wanted to pin down the idea that war is not linear to those waging it, that it's a strange and chaotic place, like a fever-dream... but that particular idea just got lost in the shuffle. Which is too bad, because I think it's an interesting concept.
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(I) would be more than happy to read more. (As long as you don't leave us hanging in The Art of Killing, that is.)
I would never dream of it. Too afraid the Isadora sisters would leap from my word processor and shank me.
Anyway there's something about the use of "very-very" that strongly reminds me of A Clockwork Orange
That never occurred to me while composing, but in retrospect... yeah, I can sort of see it. Burgess's novel is positively bursting with that manner of language--the repetition ("malchickiwick"), the alliteration ("pretty polly"). Damn, that was a good book.
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Oh and hyphonated dialogue is cool.
Agreed. I love how it makes the paragraphs look so slovenly; if an orc ever wrote a novel, he'd use dashes, and not those candyass bunny-ears.
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(...)then I just submit for your contemplation that the first chapter is better than the second
I'm contemplating it, but I sure as hell ain't liking it.
Just curious: what is it about the second chapter that makes it inferior to the first? Too dry and factual? Boring? Predictable? Something else entirely?
Anyways, thanks for the response. I will now proceed to rock on (and whatnot).
Well, this sure ain’t “terrible.” I thought it was rather well done, and would be more than willing to read any further parts you come up with. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if you work on this instead of The Art of Killing if that’s what seems most fun to you. After all, if writing a story’s fun and you get into it, that’s probably the story you’ll tell better at any given moment, and I can’t exactly say you should finish what you started first, seeing as my attention’s drifted away from A Call to Arms many a time. Anyway, here’re some comments on Part 1:
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Originally Posted by Clarke667
A warrior’s gorh is to the top, to the very-very, and I’m a warrior if there ever was one.
For consistency’s sake, you may want to spell “warrior” as “waryer” here.
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Originally Posted by Clarke667
Guts! Guts! Guts!
Other than this, I didn’t much mind the use of “Guts” as a name, but this was a little confusing. On first glance, I thought they were just acting bloodthirsty.
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Originally Posted by Clarke667
Guts took his drink back to his table, pushing aside a pair of brawling orcs and ruining a game of Cut’m by slapping one of the competitors across the back of the head. The brownrusty blade of the dagger shot through his palm in a glut of dark blood, but when he twisted his head over and saw Guts standing there, his anger evaporated. He smiled toothily at him, yanking the dagger from his flesh and licking the blade.
I second 0xDEADCAFE on this one...the bar scene is very vivid indeed. One minor note: the use of “his” and “he” in the second sentence makes it sound like Guts is the one wounded on first glance.
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Originally Posted by Clarke667
His skullbox blew like a volcano and his brains rolled down his chest like burger.
“Burger” sounds anachronistic for Warcraft. I’d see if you can’t find a more suitable sounding replacement.
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Originally Posted by Clarke667
And you say this was his best day?
If it was, then I don’t even want to know what his usual days were like.
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Originally Posted by Clarke667
The smoke and the raw gleams of iron and brass and burnished gold, horses whinnying and pine nettles scurrying greenly across the powder.
From what you describe of the battle in this piece and the next chapter, I was under the impression that this was orcs vs. dwarves. Thing is, neither race really uses horses in battle. Also, did you mean "pine needles"?
And some thoughts on Part 1 vs. Part 2: I think they're pretty close in quality. They're much different in subject matter and atmosphere, sure, but I'd say both work.
As I said before, this looks interesting, and though the idea of a “lone objector” sort of thing isn’t new, I’d say you’ve done a good job of making it feel otherwise. Thanks for posting!
RevenantsKnight
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