Silence. It is said that true silence is unobtainable - it is a utopian notion of freedom, an escape from the oppressive clutches of the world’s song that only the deaf can know. Silence is stillness, it is the death of motion, and everything is constantly in motion, thus nothing can be truly silent.
And the birch forest of the Rift was far from silent. The leaves of green and brown and yellow and red were rustling in the light breeze, falling from trees only to be carried away by the gentle wind. The birds were chirping the songs that only they understood and the trees groaned as bears leaned against them, raking the bark with their claws as they climbed towards the hives of buzzing bees.
Nothing was truly silent. And that truth rang louder for some than others.
A young Orc, barely ten winters old, was running between the trees, stumbling and tripping, scattering the leaves in front of his feet. He was panting, covered in sweat, his skin pale, his eyes frantic, the pain behind them immense.
He was running away from something, and running towards something as well.
Towards silence. Away from the noise. Away from the voice haunting him.
‘Sto… RUnni… uST LIste… me. Azr… CROssi… fiNd to… end… iS.’
The voice was rising and falling like a tide, screaming one second only to become a whisper in the next. And it wasn’t stopping. The Orc fell on the ground, groaning, then crawled back on his feet, running again as if his life depended on it. He needed to drown the voice. And the waterfall wasn’t far.
‘Liste… oR… tuSK… ake! LAkE… neA… zRa… rRossin!’
‘Grulmar!’
Someone shouted the Orc’s name, but this time it was clear, sharp, and the voice belonged to a female. He looked over his shoulder, frantic, and saw an Orc female running after him.
‘It won’t stop, mother! It won’t stop!’ he shouted, loud, in anguish, incapable of hearing his own voice.
She grabbed him by his shoulders and forced him to look at her. Her red eyes stared deep into his own and she crouched, pulling him closer, hugging him tight. “It’s not real, son. The voice - it isn’t real.”
‘But I can hear it and it hurts! I hear it; I feel it! I have to drown it, drown it, drown it, drown it...’ Grulmar kept muttering, pressing his body against his mother’s, almost hanging from her neck. She couldn’t understand, none of them could. Not even the wise-woman believed him. But it was real, it was real for him.
Shadbo held him at arms’ length, clenching her jaws, a fierce duel raging on inside her. The power of maternal love fighting with the strength of the Code. But the Code didn’t have answers for everything, and certainly not this. The muscles on her arms relaxed a bit as she sighed, pulling her son closer again. ‘I don’t understand. The wise-woman says there is no voice, but I see your pain, son. Help me understand.”
‘ZrA… oSSing-’
The young Orc twitched after the voice echoed again, suppressing a sob. He was an Orc after all, he needed to be brave. Strong. ‘It screams and it whispers,’ Grulmar murmured. ‘I don’t understand what it is saying, but it is desperate. Urgent. It wants something from me, but I don’t understand what. I-’
‘EsS!.. elP!’
Grulmar’s facial muscles twisted into a grimace as something inside his head, a place deep between his ears, exploded with agony. ‘The waterfall. Only way to silence it. Please!’ he begged his mother, tears of pain rolling down his cheeks.
Shadbo bared her tusks, biting her lower lip. She straightened a bit, looking around, then sighed. ‘The forest is not safe, Grulmar. Dunmer raiding parties have been spotted, in greater numbers since Adal Matar fell. We-’
‘ucK… al… mAta… fUC... waT… aLl!’
‘I can’t take the pain anymore!’ Grulmar shouted, leaning forward, blood pouring from his ears. And when Shadbo saw the crimson liquid her jaws clenched. It had never happened before, never in all the previous seizures her son had experienced. But this… the blood was real.
She let go of Grulmar and stood, resolute. He looked up at her in confusion and saw a determined frown on her face, the same one the chieftain used when he lectured him about the Code. ‘Stand up,’ Shadbo growled. ‘We are Orcs. We can’t be defeated, only delayed. So stand up, son!’
‘TuS... inG… Bu...Hit!’
Orcs can’t be defeated, only delayed. The undeniable truth that Orcs never give up, especially when driven into a corner. And Grulmar was an Orc, first and foremost. But the pain…
‘Get up!’ Shadbo shouted at him and something in her voice made his body react, his muscles twitching in response to her command. Everything in him felt obliged to obey, he wanted nothing more but to obey that command, and he was filled with an unexpected energy.
And so he did, slowly. Dizzy, he almost fell, and would have if it wasn’t for the nearby birch he could lean on. Because his mother wasn’t about to help him back on his feet. It was all up to him, only he could do that. And he did. Straining and growling, but he did. And he looked into his mother’s eyes and he could see pride in them.
‘Now run,’ she murmured, grabbing his hand as she started east, further away from Largashbur. She adjusted her pace to the ten-winters-old Grulmar as he stumbled behind her, his vision blurry and head spinning. It was mostly because of her that he didn’t fall. Her hand was always there pulling him forward.
‘Ru… ruN!.. dAM… it!... DuNm… uN!
Nothing was truly silent - and now even more noise was being added to the forest’s cacophony. It started as a low sound, a rustling, and it slowly changed into a thundering as their every step carried them closer to their destination. It didn’t take long before they reached a stream and they quickly changed direction and ran upstream.
The terrain was becoming more rocky as they neared the foot of the mountains, passing large boulders and sharp rocks protruding from the ground, all the while the thundering got louder and louder.
And there it was. The waterfall.
It was merely a one-step-wide current of water falling from the cliff above them, but the height gave its voice the intensity of a hundred warrior-cries. The water cascaded down for nearly twenty steps, breaking on the rocks along the way and then splattering in the trough at the bottom.
And as they neared it, the voice was getting weaker, drowning in the waterfall’s roar. But it wasn’t enough. Grulmar stumbled towards the waterfall, towards the rocks around it and he noticed Shadbo pause for a moment. He motioned for her to follow as he began clawing over stones, sticking close to the rock face, and then he finally slipped into the shallow crevice right behind the falling water.
And everything disappeared for him then, the whole world drowned out by the roar of falling water. The pain retreated, the dizziness disappeared. Maybe silence would be more comforting, but even for his age Grulmar learned that nothing was ever truly silent and this, this thundering and roaring sound was as close as he could get to true calm. The crevice around him sparkled with dazzling lights as the sun rays broke through the falling water right in front of him. As the water splashed some drops fell on him. They were chilling, soaking his clothes, but even that somehow comforted him.
The world had shrunk into this place, into now, and there was nothing except this. This was his place of calm, and nothing could take that away from him.
He didn’t know how long he had stayed there, but for a moment he could swear he heard someone shouting his name. But...not the voice, it was impossible. It couldn’t reach him there. The young Orc frowned, feeling as if he had just woken up from a dream, his mind still unsure what was real and what was not.
His mother didn’t follow him into the crevice. Maybe she was shouting at him, unable to reach him? Or maybe his mind was just playing tricks with him.
He shook his head. The voice was gone, so it had to be his mother. He began clawing his way back out from behind the waterfall, shielding his eyes from the water. He stepped on the rock in the stream and wiped the water from his eyes and-
He froze immediately.
His mother was on the stream’s bank, kneeling on the ground, surrounded by half a dozen Dark Elves. They were clad in strange chitin-like armour, holding spears and ropes in their hands. The group was standing in a semicircle around Shadbo, pointing their spears at her. Grulmar noticed his mother bleeding from her side, and there was a nasty bruise on her face. The Dark Elves were also injured - of course his mother had fought back.
Her red eyes spotted him on the stone next to the waterfall and went wide. Then one of the Dark Elves followed her gaze and spotted him too, pointing at him and shouting in a language Grulmar didn’t understand.
‘Run! RUN!’ his mother shouted, then the butt of a spear smashed into the back of her head and she fell face-first onto the ground.
‘Mother!’ Grulmar screamed. He didn’t think, he didn’t even consider the fact he was barely ten winters old, he charged straight at the nearest Dunmer.
It was a female, holding ropes, and before he could reach her she sprang forward and met him with a kick to the chest. Air whooshed out of his lungs as he hit the ground. The world went black for a moment and he heard laughter, cruel and gloating. He opened his eyes and stared into the red eyes of Shadbo lying next to him. Eyes slowly swelling with desperation and horror.
The female Grulmar had charged turned him on his belly and began tying his hands behind his back, chuckling to herself. ‘One little piggy, one bigger piggy,’ she said in Tamrielic, her voice dripping with a dark pleasure. ‘What a catch, what a catch. But there are more of you, aren’t there? All holed up in that pitiful stronghold west of here, maybe?’
Grulmar’s eyes went wide. Dunmer slavers. Dres. The chieftain talked about them. They came through the mountain pass of Adal Matar, catching Orcs, taking away their freedom, making them work in the strange land of Dark Elves. Grulmar never understood what it all meant, not when the chieftain had talked about it and not even now.
The Dunmer female laughed. ‘Oh, don’t worry, little piggy. We’re going to take your entire family with you. You won’t feel lonely where you’re going, I promise.’
They dragged Grulmar and Shadbo onto their feet and began leading them to their camp.
That was the last time Grulmar saw the waterfall.
Only the voice remained.
‘We’re here.’
Another female voice - also Dunmer, but softer, kinder - pulled him back to reality and he realised he was daydreaming. Or perhaps he was experiencing the nightmares of the past with his eyes still open. It was all just a matter of perspective.
He blinked a few times, his mind hazy, and it took him a second to remember that all of it had happened a lifetime ago.
His eyes fell on the cobblestones of Anvil’s streets under his feet and then at the building in front of him.
It was time to work.
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