Mountain Orc Name Generator

The story

The collector had called it a neglected treasure. Grakka found that it had an elbow on it. An enormous elbow, admittedly, belonging to a giant child asleep across most of the chamber. The embroidered cloth rose and fell against the child’s cheek. Grakka stood in its shadow holding a sack that now seemed an optimistic purchase. Her partner Durran examined the sleeper, then the sack, then her face. “We could take a corner,” he whispered. The collector had been unusually clear about wanting the whole cloth.

They had come over the high pass because the snowmelt opened it earlier than usual. From above, a newly usable crossing made the valley look obligingly close. Below it, water had taken a section of the lower road. The two facts had not canceled each other out. Grakka’s plan was still possible because the outgoing caravan stood on their side of the break and would leave at noon the next day. They had booked two places. If she missed departure, Durran would take the route book and continue to his son’s apprenticeship payment; she would retain their metal traveling case and they would cease doing business together. They had settled those terms before accepting the job.

A climbing bell hung from Grakka’s pack. It belonged to Sull, who used its sound to locate loads on the upper path. Its frame had a battered resonating cover, and her household’s borrowing custom required a return in better condition. She had promised to mend it from the job’s proceeds. She had not explained to Sull what the job was. In the chamber, its little accidental chime made the sleeper sit up. The child’s eyes were larger than Grakka’s fist. “Is Aunt back?” he asked. Durran made a small movement toward the exit.

The child was called Tov. He could cook, refill his basin, and usually enjoyed a night alone while his aunt traded down the road. A neighbor came to the overlook morning and evening to speak with him. This time his aunt’s journey had run late. The neighbor had already sent a runner by the longer road, and a message said that Aunt was returning that way. The note did not say when. Meltwater boomed under the floor in a new voice. Tov had put out a second dinner bowl and then fallen asleep without eating from his own. “She said after morning,” he told Grakka. “We’ve had morning.”

Grakka had been hired to acquire a cloth from an empty bed in an unused giant house. She repeated the description to Durran, quietly. He looked past her at the second bowl. Neither needed to decide whether the collector was careless or deliberately dishonest before recognizing that the story was wrong. Around the cloth’s border, short colored bars recorded Tov’s height. The newest bar ended in a loose thread. A stitched pocket lay beneath one fold. Grakka had been wondering what valuable charm it might contain. Now she understood that wondering did not give her a right to look.

Tov asked if they were messengers. Grakka said no. Durran asked whether he wanted them to fetch the neighbor, and the child said the neighbor would come at evening, as promised. Nobody required another brave journey over an uncertain road. Grakka found that disappointing. She knew how to move toward a task with a payment at its end. Remaining beside a bowl while somebody worried was a much less flattering use of her abilities. She announced that she and Durran could stay until the evening visit. He glanced at the sun and agreed.

Every little fall of stone outside sounded enough like a footstep to make Tov turn. At the evening visit, the neighbor confirmed that Aunt’s runner had met her on the long road. They were delayed, not missing. The neighbor had other dependents below and could not stay, but could return at first light. Tov asked whether grown-ups always came back once a message said they were coming. Grakka almost said yes. She remembered the collector’s easy confidence about an empty room. “Messages tell us what somebody knew then,” she said. Tov pulled the cloth closer. It was a poor substitute for the answer he wanted, but it was an answer she could afford to keep.

Durran offered to stay on the comfortable inner shelf while Grakka slept. She shook her head. Among her people, someone who asked others to follow had to take the least comfortable watch. She had been the one who said they should remain. He would need rest for his departure whether she joined it or not. She took the sheltered entrance, where cool air touched her ankles and the meltwater sounded close. Tov remained inside, within calling distance. Grakka did not tell him that she was a burglar. She did tell him she had come for something she had no right to take. He considered this and asked if that meant she was leaving hungry.

They shared the dinner he had made. Later she tried a song. She remembered only three lines of it and suspected that two belonged to another song entirely. The climbing bell’s thin rattle disturbed Tov more than it soothed him. Its battered cover was making a broken second sound. Grakka turned the noise into a ridiculous refrain about a small bird with oversized boots, then promised to stop whenever he wanted. He asked for the boots again. While he dozed, she measured the damaged cover against the metal traveling case that would become her sole equipment. It was the first possession she had pictured taking into a respectable new life.

At dawn she gave Durran a note canceling her caravan place. The booking money was gone. He read it and did not pretend that his son’s payment could wait indefinitely for her conscience. They divided their remaining cash under the terms they had already agreed, and he took the book. Grakka disliked seeing his back on the path. She disliked herself a little for wanting him to miss his own promise so she would feel less alone in keeping hers. Then Tov called to ask whether another morning had happened, and she went inside.

Aunt arrived the second afternoon, filthy from the longer road and carrying the runner’s empty water cup. She embraced Tov first. Grakka waited. When she described the collector, Aunt’s expression gave her a new reason to be glad she had not taken even a corner. She received thanks and no replacement-parent title. Before leaving the valley, Grakka paid the local metalworker to make a new resonating cover from her case. Sull’s bell returned with a clearer note and a protected frame. Her case returned with a wooden patch that would never impress a collector. Tov asked when she would sing the boot song again. She promised one visit at the next valley market, if the ordinary road was open, and wrote the day down. It was a very small promise. For once, its size was a comfort.