Page 46 of Orc'd & Loaded
He does. By the seventh, the placement is clean. By the ninth, almost elegant. His tongue pokes between his teeth when he concentrates. I file that information away for absolutely no reason.
"Now," he says, straightening to his full height and rolling his shoulders with a crack that echoes off the tile. "My turn."
He disappears into the hallway. Boots heavy on the floor. A door bangs. He returns carrying something wrapped in oilcloth that he sets it with a thud that rattles every pot on the rack.
The cloth falls open.
The cleaver is the length of my forearm. The blade is carbon steel, black with age, stamped with Orcish symbols along thespine. The handle is wrapped in dark leather worn smooth by generations of palms bigger than mine.
"No."
"You said we split the prep. Your half, my half."
"I have a Misono UX10 gyuto. I have a Masamoto virgin carbon..."
"You have toothpicks." He grabs a celeriac from the produce crate. Sets it on the board. The root vegetable is knobbed and ugly. "Chop."
"With that."
"With that."
I wrap both hands around the leather grip. The weight pulls my wrists forward. Five pounds minimum. The balance sits three inches ahead of the bolster, all blade, no finesse. A tool designed for severing bone, not brunoise.
I lift. Bring it down. The celeriac splits clean in half with a sound like a branch snapping. Both halves rock on the board. The cut face is smooth. Almost glassy.
"Again. Quarters."
I chop. The blade bites. Perfectly even.
"Eighths."
Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop. The rhythm builds. The weight becomes momentum. My shoulders burn but the cuts land true every time because the cleaver doesn't allow hesitation. Commit or miss. No half-strokes. No delicacy.
Boris leans against the counter and folds his arms across his scorched apron. His amber eyes track the blade.
"You see? Your knives think too much. Mine just decide."
"Barbaric."
"Efficient."
I split the final eighth into precise batons. Line them up. Uniform. Clean.
"Again," Boris says, and drops another celeriac on the board. "Faster."
The second celeriac disintegrates under the cleaver. Batons. Uniform. Fast.
"Faster."
I go faster. My arms burn from the ridiculous weight of the blade but the cuts stay clean because Boris is right about one miserable thing: commitment eliminates error. The steel hits the board with a rhythm that fills the wrecked kitchen like a drum line.
He slides a third root onto the board before I finish the second. No pause. No mercy. I split it without breaking stride.
"Good. Now do that to the parsnips while I rebuild the base."
"You don't rebuild a base. You build it correctly the first time."
"The first time, you tackled me into a counter."
