The Shattering Read online

  Up ahead, Cairne caught a blur of movement as a scout caught sight of the Horde standard at the front of Cairne’s entourage and dashed away. Cairne and his group followed along the line of the quarry until they encountered a path that descended into it. It was not an impressive entrance, but a workmanlike one, and Cairne found himself in what had been the forge area.

  Now, though, no rivers of yellow molten metal flooded the channels; there was no “tink tink” sound of hammer on anvil. His nose, keener than his eyesight these days, caught the faint, stale scent of wolf. The beasts had been gone for some time, sent home even before their masters. What weapons and ammunition there were seemed to have been gathering dust for a while. Once Cairne could make a proper assessment of what was going on, the several kodos who had also made the sea voyage, excellent beasts of burden, would help transport the cargo back to the ships.

  Cairne felt the chill of the place. With the forges running, there would be more than enough heat generated to warm the cavernous, open area, but with them still and silent, the cold of Northrend had permeated. Cairne, seasoned veteran though he was, was almost overwhelmed by the size of the place. Larger certainly than Grommash Hold, probably even larger than some Horde cities, it was massive, open, and empty feeling. Their hooffalls echoed as he and his people moved toward the center of the first level.

  Two orcs engaged in deep discussion turned as he approached. Cairne knew them both and nodded respectfully at them. The older one with green skin was Varok Saurfang, younger brother to the great hero Broxigar and father to the late, deeply grieved Dranosh Saurfang. Many had lost a great deal in this conflict; Varok more than anyone’s fair share.

  His son had fallen, along with thousands of others, at Angrathar the Wrath Gate. On that dark day, Horde and Alliance had fought side by side against the best the Lich King could throw at them—even prompting that monster himself to appear. Young Saurfang fell, his soul consumed by Frostmourne. Moments later, a Forsaken known as Putress unleashed a plague that would destroy both the living and the undead.

  More torment lay in store for the Saurfang line. The corpse of the young warrior was raised by the Lich King, then turned loose to destroy those he had loved in life. A blow more of mercy than of battle had ended his unnatural existence. Only with the fall of the Lich King had High Overlord Varok Saurfang been able to finally bring home the body of his boy—a corpse, now, and nothing more.

  Grizzled, strong, Saurfang was everything that Cairne felt was best about the orcs. He had wisdom and honor, a powerful arm in battle, and a cool head for strategy. Cairne had not seen Saurfang since his son had fallen at the Wrath Gate, and he silently took in the aging such a deep pain had wrought. Cairne did not know if he, faced with such a horrific violation of all the tauren held dear in the shape of his child, could have borne the double loss half as well as Saurfang did.

  “High Overlord,” Cairne rumbled, bowing. “As a father myself, I grieve for what you have had to endure. But know that your son died a hero, and what you have wrought here honors his memory. Anything else is borne away on the winds.”

  Saurfang grunted acknowledgment. “It is good to see you again, High Chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof. And … I know what you say is true. I am not ashamed to say, though, that I am glad this campaign has finally come to an end. We have lost too much.”

  The younger orc standing beside Saurfang grimaced, as if the words were distasteful to him, and it was clearly an effort for him to hold his tongue. His skin was not green, as was that of most orcs Cairne had met, but rather a shade of rich loam brown, marking him as a Mag’har from Outland. His pate was bald save for a long ponytail of brown hair. This, of course, was Garrosh Hellscream. No doubt to him it was dishonorable to admit that one was glad that battle had come to a close. The tauren chieftain knew that the passing years would teach him that while it was good to fight for a worthy cause and to earn victory, peace was also a good thing. But for now, despite the long, hard-fought war, Garrosh clearly had not had enough of combat, and this bothered Cairne.

  “Garrosh,” Cairne said. “Word of your deeds has penetrated to all corners of Azeroth. I am sure you are very proud of your accomplishments here, as Saurfang is of his.”

  The compliment was genuine, and Garrosh’s tense posture eased slightly. “How many of your troops will be returning with us?” continued Cairne.

  “Nearly all of them,” Garrosh replied. “I leave a skeleton crew with Saurfang, and a few others at outposts here and there. I do not anticipate he will have need even of that. The Warsong offensive has crushed the Scourge and taken the fighting spirit out of the rest of our enemies, as we came here to do. It is my belief that my former advisor will sit and watch spiders spin cobwebs and fully enjoy the peace he so obviously craves.”

  The words might have stung another. Cairne bridled on Saurfang’s behalf—after what the older orc had endured, Garrosh’s words were particularly harsh. Saurfang, however, clearly had grown used to Garrosh’s attitude and merely grunted.

  “We have both done our duties. We serve the Horde. If I serve by watching little spiders instead of fighting large ones, then I am well content.”

  “And I must serve the Horde by bringing its victorious soldiers safely home,” Cairne said. “Garrosh, which of your soldiers is assigned the task of directing the withdrawal?”

  “I,” Garrosh said, surprising Cairne. “Such as it is. We all have shoulders to carry items.” Once downtrodden and ashamed of his heritage, Garrosh had struck the old tauren as a youth who would require a specially shaped doorway to accommodate his swollen head. And yet he did not hesitate to do the basest task right alongside his soldiers. Cairne smiled, pleased. He suddenly understood a bit better why the orcs Garrosh led admired him so deeply.

  “My shoulders are more stooped than they once were, but I daresay they can bear what they need to,” Cairne said. “Let us get to work.”

  * * *

  It was the work of less than two days to finish packing the supplies that would accompany the troops, load them onto kodos, and transport them to the ship. As they worked, many of the orcs and trolls sang songs in their harsh, guttural tongues. Cairne understood Orcish and Zandali, and smiled at the discrepancies between the actions of the songs and what was actually transpiring. Trolls and orcs blithely sang of chopping off arms and legs and heads while tying boxes onto the backs of the mellow pack kodos. Still, their spirits were high, and Garrosh sang as loudly as any of them.

  At one point, as they were walking side by side carrying crates to the ship, Cairne asked, “Why did you leave your landing site, Garrosh?”

  Garrosh shifted the weight on his shoulder. “It was never intended to be a permanent site. Not when Warsong Hold was so close.”

  Cairne eyed the great hall and the tower. “Then why build these?”

  Garrosh did not answer. Cairne let him remain silent for a time. Garrosh might be many things, but the taciturn type he was not. He would speak … eventually.

  And sure enough, Garrosh said after a moment, “We built these when we landed. At first there was no trouble. Then a foe unlike any I have encountered came out of the mists. It does not sound as if you have been troubled by them but, I confess, I have wondered if they would return.”

  A foe so powerful as to give Garrosh pause? “What is this enemy that gave you such trouble?” Cairne asked.

  “They are called the Kvaldir,” Garrosh said. “The tuskarr think they are the angered spirits of slain vrykul.” Cairne exchanged glances with Maaklu Cloudcaller, the tauren who happened to be walking alongside them. Cloudcaller was a shaman, and as he regarded Cairne he nodded slightly. None of Cairne’s landing party had personally seen the vrykul, but Cairne knew of them. They looked like humans—if humans were larger than tauren and sometimes had skin that was covered in ice, or made of metal or stone. They were definitely full of violence and power. Cairne was comfortable with the idea of being surrounded by spirits, but those were tauren ancestors. Their presence
was positive. The thought of vrykul ghosts haunting this place was not a pleasant one. Cloudcaller, too, looked a bit uneasy at the notion.

  “They come when the mists are thickest. The tuskarr say that is what enables them to manifest,” Garrosh continued. He sounded skeptical. Too, there was a strange tone in his voice. Embarrassment?

  “They terrified many of my warriors and were so powerful they forced us to withdraw to Warsong Hold. I was finally able to take back this site when the Lich King fell.”

  And there was the shame. Not in seeing “ghosts,” if indeed they were such, but in being forced to run from them. No wonder Garrosh had not mentioned why he had abandoned Garrosh’s Landing, a place he might logically feel some pride in and fondness for.

  Cairne kept his gaze carefully averted from the scowling Garrosh, who was clearly ready to defend his honor if he heard anything he could perceive as an insult to his courage.

  “The Scourge do not come to these shores,” Garrosh added, somewhat defensively. “It seems even they do not like the Kvaldir.”

  Well, if the Kvaldir had not attacked them so far, Cairne would not complain. “Warsong Hold is a better strategic site,” was all Cairne said.

  * * *

  It was midday on the second day when Cairne bade farewell to Saurfang. He gripped the other’s hand hard. Garrosh might have joked about the peace and quiet of remaining up here with but a skeleton crew, but the reality would be something else. And there would likely be ghosts aplenty to haunt Saurfang, if only in his memories. Cairne knew that, and as he looked into Saurfang’s eyes, he knew that the orc knew it, too.

  Cairne wanted to thank him again, to offer encouragement, praise for a task so successfully completed. For being able to bear such burdens. But Saurfang was an orc, not a blood elf, and lavish compliments and effusion would not be welcomed or wanted.

  “For the Horde,” Cairne said.

  “For the Horde,” Saurfang replied, and it was enough.

  The fighters who comprised the last wave of the Warsong offensive to depart Northrend shouldered their weapons and began to trudge westward, through the quarry and up onto the Plains of Nasam.

  As had happened every time they went this way, the fog closed slowly about them. Cairne felt nothing supernatural about it; but, as he would freely admit, he was a warrior, not a shaman. Still, he had not endured what Garrosh and his fighters had, nor seen what they had seen, and he knew there were such things as angry spirits.

  The fog slowed them down, but nothing unusual rose up to attack them. As they made their way to the beach and the small boats waiting for them, however, Cairne slowed. He sensed … something. His ears twitched, and he sniffed the cool, moist air.

  As Cairne strained his old eyes to try to see in the obscuring mist, he could make out the faint, ghostly shape of a ship. No, more than one … two … three …

  “Kvaldir!” roared Garrosh.

  TWO

  For a few precious moments, everyone struggled against a sense of fear, forcing themselves to focus on the approaching battle. The ships emerged from the mist’s veil, manned by the dead. Pale, they were; pale with a tinge of green, of rot, and wrapped with seaweed, their clothing sodden and torn. The oars went up, and the Kvaldir, crying and moaning, leaped into the water and surged upon the shore.

  They were everywhere, enormous and ghastly, moving faster than such supposedly undead things should by all rights be able to move, to interpose themselves between the Horde warriors and Warsong Hold. The second ship pulled up alongside Mannoroth’s Bones, and the things that some called spirits of the dead began to attack the living. On the shore, others closed the ring about Cairne and Garrosh, moving so swiftly for the attack that some of Garrosh’s fighters died before they had even had a chance to swing their weapons.

  Cairne, too, moved more swiftly than one would think. Unlike some of the orcs, who were cowering or even running in terror, he had no fear of the dead. Let them come. With a deep bellow he charged one of the giant, undead warriors, attempting to use the rune-covered haft of his ancestral spear to knock some of the others aside. They were swift to evade the spear, and even over the moaning and shrieking, Cairne heard the wind as the spear struck nothing. The runespear was blessed by a shaman, as all Cairne’s weapons were; if it encountered even a ghost, it would do harm.

  “Stand and fight!” Cairne bellowed. “There is nowhere to flee!”

  He was right. They were trapped between the hold and their ship on the ocean, which itself was coming under attack. They were caught out in the open and—

  No. Not in the open.

  “Retreat!” Cairne roared, reversing his previous command. He pitched his voice as loud as possible over the unearthly cries of the Kvaldir and the battle shouts of the pathetically few who were left of the once-vast Warsong offensive. “Retreat to the great hall at Garrosh’s Landing!” They could catch their breaths, plan, regroup. Anything was better than standing and being slaughtered with no real strategy for fighting back.

  Considering the orc’s penchant for reckless action, Cairne half-expected Garrosh to protest. But instead Garrosh took up the cry, blowing a horn he had strapped to his hip and pointing to the west. At once the Horde members moved in that direction, hacking at the undead creatures as they went. Some of them didn’t make it, decapitated or gutted by the double-bladed and very corporeal axes of the Kvaldir. Even Cairne was hard pressed to keep moving forward, and at one point a pale hand closed upon and twined about the runespear, threatening to tug it from his grasp. Cairne did not resist the pull, instead letting the hideous thing haul him to itself.

  No enemy would be permitted to abscond with the runespear.

  He shouted a battle cry and stabbed.

  It sank deep. The Kvaldir’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth, spat blood, and sank to the earth. Cairne stared. Flesh and blood and bone! Garrosh was right to be skeptical of the tuskarr stories. The ghostly spirits were nothing more than living beings. And anything that lived … could die.

  The revelation fueled Cairne as he moved steadily toward the great hall, partially obscured now by the strange mist that was nothing more sinister than a cover for the vrykul—for so they had to be. Some of the others had gotten there before him. Cairne saw with dismay that two of the three doors had been damaged. One was gone completely; the other hung by a single hinge.

  His eyes fell upon a table where once, in pleasanter times, the soldiers would gather for a repast. Indeed, a weather-beaten lantern, mug, and bowl still sat on the table. With a single sweep of his huge arm, Cairne sent them flying, then grasped the table in both hands. Grunting slightly, he lifted the table, attached benches and all, and hurried to the doorway as fast as he could.

  Garrosh grinned. “You are smart and strong, old bull,” he said with admiration that, while grudging, was nonetheless genuine. “You! Grab those crates! Everyone else, hurry, inside, inside!”

  They obeyed. Cairne waited, singlehandedly holding aloft the table, until the last one, a troll bleeding badly from a sliced-up leg, hobbled into the great hall. The second he was inside, Cairne ducked in after him and slammed the table into the doorway at a slight angle so that it wedged in firmly. Not a heartbeat later, the makeshift door shuddered under the thump of an attack. There was more pounding and the moans of the “undead.”

  Cairne gulped in air as he continued to barricade the door. “They are foes, but they are living foes!” he told them. “Garrosh, you were right. The Kvaldir are no more or less than vrykul. They use the mist and costumes as weapons to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies before they attack. It fooled me at first, too—until the runespear impaled one of them and I realized what they were doing.”

  “Whatever they be, we cannot hold much longer,” gasped Cloudcaller, leaning his broad back against the “door” as it shook. Others braced against it. The shaman and druids among the group were desperately trying to attend to the wounded, of which there were many—too many. Fully a third of the already dim
inished group was injured, some of them seriously. “The crates—any weapons in them? Anything we could use?”

  It was a good idea, but one without hope. Most of them had dropped the supplies as they turned to battle their attackers. Carrying the heavy crates with them as they headed for the safety of the great hall would have been foolish.

  “We have nothing,” Cairne said. “Nothing save our courage.”

  He had just taken a deep breath, hoping to say a few words to inspire his and Garrosh’s people as they fought what would doubtless be their last battle, when Garrosh interrupted him.

  “We have our courage, yes,” said Garrosh, “but we also have something more. And we will show these false ghosts the price they must pay for attempting to trick us. They think we are vulnerable outside of the hold. And they want to take back this landing. They will know the wrath of the Horde!”

  He strode to the center of the hall and flipped back a woven rug that had been lying on the floor. Beneath it was a trap door. With a grunt of effort, Garrosh slowly tugged it open. The trap door fell back with a clang, revealing a small, hollowed-out area.

  And in that area, piled high like watermelons, were grenades.

  Some of the warriors cheered. The others looked at Garrosh, confused.

  “You left them here, just in case, did you not?” Cairne asked, surprised. “In case Warsong Hold fell?”

  The orcs were not overfond of contingency plans, Cairne had learned. They did not like to even conceive of possible defeat. And yet it was obvious that Garrosh had done exactly that—left a crate of valuable weapons buried in the sand, in case at some later time, when the orcs were in full retreat, they would have need of them.

  Garrosh nodded shortly. “It is not a pleasant thought.”

  “But it is the mark of a leader, to hold all possibilities, even the unpleasant—even the unthinkable.” Cairne said. “It was well done, Garrosh.” He inclined his head in a gesture of respect even as a particularly vigorous assault nearly caved his door in.