While going through some super old documents, I scrounged up this short story I started, but never finished. It is about an orc with a gigantic butt. I have no idea what to do with it, so now it’s your problem.
King Fat-Arse
There is a word in High Draconic which, if you had the requisite two tongues with which to pronounce it, might sound something like k’kraughllg. There is no literal translation, or even an approximate one, because the concept conveyed by this word exist outside of mortal experience. In plainest terms, it describes a foul odor. But human noses are dull, muted things, incapable of truly experiencing the full breadth of smells the universe is capable of producing. No, this word describes a smell so foul that inhaling it can actually damage one’s inner light. It describes the stenches which roil up from the deepest pits of the bottommost hell. It describes the thousand-year-old droppings of six-toed demons who feast entirely on rotgut and misery.
The cave in which the bard was currently seated smelled pretty k’kraughllg right about now.
Part of it was the bog outside, he knew. Rain was hammering away outside, kicking up splatters of muck, pooling up in the crooks of trees, oozing slime down their long, drooping trunks. The storm was so violent it was stripping away the caked-on top layer of swamp, allowing the new and exciting rot underneath to breathe. Smells that had laid buried in the swamp for a generation took their opportunity to bubble up and wage war on the open air.
The other part, though, was the bard’s unconscious companion, the orc-king. He was laying flat on his stomach on the opposite side of the cave, his head laying in a fetid puddle. He was snoring softly, his mouth burbling against the mixture of spittle and cave-slime he was laying in. Most of his weight was supported on his right knee, his left leg twisted off at an angle which would be considered unnaturally even by orcish standards. This caused him to be folded comically in half, with the largest and loudest part of him jutting straight up into the air.
The driest part of the cave sat empty. The bard had abandoned it in favor of a slime-covered rock nearer to the cave entrance, so as not to be sitting downwind of the slobbering orc-king. The sound of the torrent outside was constantly being split by the braaps and spluts escaping from his backside. The bard couldn’t name a sickness that caused a man to lose his sense of smell, but if he could have, he would have given a bag of silver to be presently afflicted.
One such fart escaped with such force that the orc-king’s center of gravity shifted slightly, just enough to cause him tumbling over with a loud crash. The shock of it jolted his eyes open, and for a moment the bard saw there a very genuine and very sad sort of confusion. That confusion faded almost immediately away to anger, and the orc-king thrashed about with his limbs, trying to right himself.
“Owww!” he complained, suddenly clutching his left leg in pain. He rocked back and forth, hugging his knee with one hand and sucking the thumb on the other.
“Well, I’ve decided,” said the bard in a bored tone of voice, “you’ve wounded your leg. I’ve been sitting here for hours trying to work out whether you’d bent it when you fell, or if it was just naturally twisted ’round.”
The orc-king, suddenly aware of having been addressed, turned his gaze towards the bard. He let his thumb fall from his mouth, hanging there by a long tendril of drool. Once a few awkward moments had passed the orc-king seemed to recall he was an intimidating and imposing figure. He said, “I’m suck the fat from you’s bones, hyoomun.”
“I take offense, sir. I’m quite lean,” said the bard. “Besides, I’ve disarmed you.” He gestured to the notched stone ax and the pile of mismatched daggers sitting to his side.
The orc-king grunted, squinted his eyes, and slapped his hand against his belly. “I am king,” he said. “My orcs tear you apart when find us.”
The bard admitted, “I’d considered that. True, it’s only a matter of time before this storm passes, and once it does your, eh, subjects are bound to find us here. When that happens, you will of course be a good lad and tell them I’m not to be harmed.”
“We put you over a spit, hyoomun. Roast you good, golden brown, both sides.”
“Poo on that. You’ll do no such thing.”
“Why not, hyoomun?”
The bard stood up, took one step towards the pile of weapons, and leaned his weight onto the stone ax. Handle and all, it was heavy enough and tall enough to support him quite comfortably – and quite menacingly, he imagined. “Because I could have killed you at any moment while you were asleep – and I didn’t.”
The orc-king growled, but it was not a fierce growl. It was more the noise one might make when contemplating whether to swallow the lump of phlegm in his throat or to hork it up and spit it in the road. “My orcs find us,” he said slowly, “why’s won’t I make ’em kill you then?”
The bard pondered that a moment, then said “Because that would qualify as a betrayal, which displays a certain amount of cunning on your part. And it’s well known that orcs are not cunning creatures.”
The orc-king nodded, satisfied that answer made decent enough sense. He groaned as he shifted his weight around, flopping his limp, worthless leg in front of him and relaxing his back against the stone wall of the cave. “Why’s you not kill me, then?”
“I haven’t the strength to lift your ax,” said the bard. He let out a small laugh. “Why, it was all I could do to drag the damned thing over here. And besides, if I had killed you, and your orcs did find me, who would tell them I’m not to be harmed?”
The orc-king chewed his bottom lip, peeling off a layer of cracked skin with his front teeth. “You’s in orc-land, hyoomun. No foot-roads in orc-land. No friends here.”
The bard nodded an agreement. “I suppose not. Nonetheless, I found what it was I came all this way searching for.”
“No shinies in orc-land, hyoomun. No shinies since dwarf-days.”
“Oh, I’m not searching for gold,” said the bard. “I collect stories. And I’ve always felt that you orcs were fascinating creatures. Misunderstood, even. Why, I bet your people have a positively illuminating mythology.”
“You’s take it back, hyoomun!” shouted the orc-king, rising up on his right leg. He got his left leg up, too, but once he put a bit of weight on it it crumpled out from underneath him, sending him back to the ground with a roar of pain. He sneezed as he slunk back to his wall, trying in vain to find the comfortable position he’d just bolted up from. When he’d gotten close enough, he wiped the snot from his nose on the back of his hand. “We’s not ‘lumm-natchin’,” he pouted.
The bard bowed apologetically. “My mistake,” he said. “Nonetheless, it seems like neither of us will be moving from this spot for the time being. Your orcs won’t be able to search for you in this rain. Give me your story, sir, and when I leave this swamp I’ll take the tales of orcish heroism back with me to the lands of men.”
The orc-king sat up and puffed out his chest. “I’s ain’t thought of it that way before,” he said, “but I’s done lots of hee-row-in’, ya knows. I’s king.” He tapped the crown on his brow, obviously made for a head three sizes smaller, but squashed down nonetheless over the tops of his chewed ears.
“A grand tale, that,” mused the bard. “Tell me how you became king.”
“Lots of hee-row-in’,” repeated the orc-king. “See, I’s just a grunt, once…”
The grunt had had no other name but Fat-Arse his whole stupid, stinking life. Orcs aren’t known for being maternal creatures at the best of times, but Fat-Arse’s mother had traded him away into gruntery for a sack of pig parts. At least, that’s what Gruntmaster Jook had always told him. If it were true, that would be the first lucky thing to happen to Fat-Arse in his life.
Most orcs come into the world with some nature of deformity, some freak physical protrusion that comes to shape their identities within orcish society. The lucky ones emerge with physical quirks that prove useful in the bloody, violent world of orcs: huge, muscular shoulders to better heft an impossibly large greatax. Or an extra row of sharp, iron-like teeth lining the inside of an oversized mouth capable of biting an opponent’s head off. These babes are selected for by the gruntmasters to serve in their packs, and make up the bulk of what the flimsy races see.
Behind them, though, entire populations of orcs exist with one foot twice the size of the other, or an eye wrenched permanently shut by a huge, flabby eyebrow, or sixteen extra toes. Such orcs are useless for combat, and since combat is the only thing orcs know, these creatures live wretched lives of toil underneath the heels of the gruntmasters.
Fat-Arse had a back end so big the rest of him could have curled up inside of it. He lugged it around like a tired man dragging an overfull burlap sack, which is the closest thing to pants he could find to wear most of the time. The sight of him as a babe was so comical that he was sent to the Gruntmaster as a sort of cruel amusement. That was a kindness; his mother was liable to have drowned him, otherwise.
At some point during Fat-Arse’s early childhood the sight of him became less comical to Gruntmaster Jook. Whether the Gruntmaster was disgusted with him, or merely bored, Fat-Arse never learned, but he was sent unceremoniously out to the pack to take up with the other orclings his age. Promising grunts all, these orclings made Fat-Arse’s life absolute hell. He would be made to lay face-down in the mud so one of his tormenters could climb up onto his back and bang on his cheeks like a drum. Or they would paint a sloppy bullseye on his rump and use it for slingshot practice. Or they would set his pants on fire, knowing it might be weeks before another suitable pair turned up in a raid.
The most humiliating aspect of Fat-Arse’s torture, though, was the meat. Grunts had to earn the right to eat meat by proving themselves worthy in battle. The fattest, juiciest cuts were reserved for the Gruntmaster and his favorites, of course, but even the lowliest dirt-sucking grunt could earn a fatty steak or glistening turkey leg if he could distinguish himself in battle. Upcoming orclings, though, like Fat-Arse, were sent meat scraps at every meal. The savory taste of it, the tenderness, the sensation of sucking the grease and blood off of a wide bone… it was meant to give the future grunts a hunger for glory. To an orc, meat was better than gold.
Fat-Arse’s orcling brothers learned their lessons well, and early. Nine nights out of ten his scraps were wrenched from him after a savage beating. Soon, even the threat of a savage beating would suffice. Eventually the grunt in charge of the orclings’ meals stopped giving him a portion entirely. When Fat-Arse tried to protest, he was told to carve off a hunk of his own arse if he was that hungry.
With time, the orclings turned into grunts, and their meat had to be earned. The pack would descend on small farming villages or lumbering merchant caravans. Raids, the orcs called them. Grunts lived and died for raids. They would descend out of the badlands to rape and pillage their way across a fertile countryside, until some uppity lord got fed up enough to send an army after them. Then they’d be chased back to the badlands, fatter and richer than they were. Then, a short rest. Then travel. Then they’d emerge from another part of the badlands and do it all again.
Fat-Arse hated the raids. Orcs were supposed to look menacing to the eyes of men, but Fat-Arse simply looked like a fool in a fatsuit. A seasoned grunt could run a man down on deft, careful feet; Fat-Arse could only manage a clumsy gait, the weight of him swinging low to the ground behind him. And the arrows, by gods. If he was an appealing target to orcling brats with slingshots, he was doubly so to frightened archers defending their fields from raiders. More often than not, while the rest of the grunts were drinking to their victory and divvying up their newly-won treasures, Fat-Arse would slink off somewhere and pull a half-dozen wooden shafts out of the flesh of his butt.
That’s it, thank you for reading this unfinished story about a butt.
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