Rise of the Horde Read online

  "The shaman have been kept busy this winter with the fever." Durotan's father. Garad. said. He reached down and petted the huge white wolf who was drowsing by the fire. The beast, its white coat distinguishing it as a Frostwolf. made a soft crooning sound of pleasure. "Soon as one of the younglings gets cured, another falls ill."

  "I am ready for spring, myself," another male said, standing and tossing another log on the fire. "It's been harsh with the animals, too. When we were preparing for the festival, we had a hard time finding clefthooves."

  "Klaga makes a delicious soup from the bones, but she refuses to tell us what herbs she uses." a third said, glaring at a female who was nursing an infant. The female in question, presumably Klaga, chuckled.

  "The only one who'll get that recipe is this little one when she comes of age," Klaga replied, and grinned.

  Durotan's jaw dropped. He turned his head to stare at Orgrim, who wore a similar expression of stunned dismay. This was what was so important, so secret that the children were forbidden to leave the tent to listen to it? Discussions of fevers and soups?

  In the bright light of the moon. Durotan had no trouble seeing Orgrim's face clearly. The other youth's brows drew together in a frown.

  "You and I can come up with something more interesting than this. Durotan." he said in a low, gruff voice.

  Durotan grinned and nodded. He was certain of it.

  The festival lasted for two more days. During the daytime and at night, when the two would sneak out together, they challenged each other to different contests of skill. Racing, climbing, strength, sure-footedness— everything they could think of. And each defeated the other almost as if they had planned on taking turns. When, on the last day. Orgrim loudly called for a fifth challenge to break the stalemate, something inside Durotan made him speak.

  "Let us not perform common, ordinary challenges," Durotan said, wondering where the words came from even as he uttered diem, "Let us do something truly different in the history of our people."

  Orgrim's bright gray eyes gleamed as he leaned forward. "What do you suggest?"

  "Let us be friends, you and I."

  Orgrim's heavily muscled jaw dropped. "But—we are not of the same clan!" he said, in a voice that indicated that Durotan might have proposed a friendship between the great black wolf and the mild talbuk.

  Durotan waved a dismissive hand. "We are not enemies," he said. "Look around you. The clans come together twice a year and there is no harm in it."

  "But . . . my father says it is precisely because we come together so seldom that the peace is kept," Orgrim continued. His brow knotted with concern.

  Disappointment colored Durotan's words with bitterness. "Very well. I thought you braver than the others, Orgrim of the Doomhammer line, but you are no better than they—timid and shy and unwilling to see beyond what has always been done to what is possible."

  The words had come from his heart, but had Durotan calculated them and honed them for weeks, he could not have chosen better. Orgrim's brown face flushed and his eyes snapped.

  "I am no coward!" he snarled. "I back down from no challenge, you upstart Frostwolf!"

  He sprang on Durotan then, knocking the smaller orc off his feet, and the two pummeled each other until the shaman needed to be brought in for healing and lecturing on the inappropriateness of fighting in a sacred space.

  "Impetuous boy," scolded the head shaman of the Frostwolves, an ancient orc female they called "Mother" Kashur. "You are not too old to be beaten as a disobedient child, young Durotan!"

  The shaman who tended Orgrim muttered similar displeased sounds. But even as blood streamed freely from his nose, and as he watched the shaman heal a wicked gash on Orgrim's brown torso, Durotan grinned. Orgrim caught his gaze and grinned back.

  The challenge had begun, the final challenge, so much more important than races or lifting stones, and neither was willing to admit defeat ... to say that a friendship between two youths of different clans was wrong. Durotan had a feeling that this particular challenge would end only when one of them was dead ... and perhaps not even then.

  TWO

  I remember when we first encountered the tauren. I remember Cairne Bloodhoof's deep voice and calm face. I remember sitting oit the ground in a tent that could be broken down and erected with startling speed, and feeling oddly at home. We smoked pipes, shared food and drink, felt the drumming in our bones, and talked. The tauren seemed to me bestial at first, but there was wisdom and humor in them, and by the time the first round of negotiations had been conducted, I knew that the ores had a rare ally in these half-bovine beings.

  Night had fallen while we spoke, a soft night befitting this beautiful land. We left the tent and gazed up at stars too numerous too count, a sweet wind caressing our faces. I turned to Drek'Thar, to ask for his wisdom. To my astonishment I saw tears on his face, glinting in the moon's light.

  "This is how we used to be, my chieftain," he said in a broken voice. He lifted his arms and tilted his head back, calling the wind to embrace him and dry the tears on his strong green face. "Close to the earth. Close to the spirits. Strong in the hunt, gentle with the younglings, knowing our place in the world to be right and just. Understanding the balance of taking and giving. The only magic the tauren practice is the good, clean magic of the earth, and the land reflects that, the way Draenor once reflected our connection."

  I thought of the tauren's request for aid infighting their enemy, the vile, filthy centaur.

  "Yes . . . I feel for them. It will be good to be able to help them," I said.

  Drek 'Thar laughed, turning his blind eyes to me and seeing me more clearly than anyone with sight could.

  "Oh, my young Thrall," he said, chuckling still, "you do not yet understand. They will help us."

  Durotan ran as fast as his powerful young legs could carry him. His breath came fast, and sweat dappled his reddish-brown skin, but he forced himself to keep going. It was summer, and his large, flat feet were bare. The grass was soft beneath him as he ran, and occasionally he would step on the bright purple blossom of a dassanflower. The scent from the bruised plant traditionally cultivated for healing wafted up like a blessing, inspiring him to run even farther, even faster.

  Now he was on the fringe of the Terokkar forest, pushing forward into its cool, gray-green depths. He had to watch out for the twining roots of the elegant trees lest he trip over them, and his pace perforce slowed. Soft lights glowed in the green heart of this forest, and the calm it exuded was at sharp odds with Durotan's need for triumph. He increased his pace, leaping over fallen tree trunks covered with moss, ducking under low-slung branches with the grace of a talbuk. His black hair, long and thick and spilling all the way to the middle of his back, flew behind him. His lungs burned and his legs cried out for him to cease, but he ground his teeth and ignored the pleas from his body. He was a Frostwolf, the heir to clan chieftaincy, and no Blackrock would possibly—

  Durotan heard a fair approximation of a war cry behind him and his heart sank. Orgrim's voice, like Durotan's, was still sinking toward the deep bellow that marked an adult male, but even Durotan had to admit it was already impressive. He willed his legs to pump even harder, but they felt as heavy and unmoving as if they had been carved of stone. He watched in dismay out of the corner of his eye as Orgrim came into his field of vision and then, with a final spurt of energy, raced past him.

  The Blackrock orc extended his arm and lunged, managing to hit the tree trunk in the clearing that they had decided represented the goal of the race right before Durotan did. Orgrim kept going for several more strides, as if his powerful legs, once put into motion, were reluctant to stop. Durotan's legs had no such problems, and the heir to the Frostwolf clan fell forward, barely catching himself. He lay facedown in the cool, sweet-smelling mossy earth, gasping for air,

  knowing he should sit up, knowing he should challenge Orgrim again, but too exhausted to do anything other than lie on the forest floor and recover.

&n
bsp; Beside him, he heard Orgrim doing likewise, and then the other orc youth rolled over on his back and began to laugh. Durotan joined in. The birds and small animals that inhabited the Terokkar forest were silent as two ores uttered sounds of mirth that, Durotan thought as his lips curled past his still-forming tusks, probably sounded more than a little like the fierce war cries that presaged a hunt.

  "Ha," grunted Orgrim, sitting up and punching Durotan in a playful manner. "It is little effort to beat a stripling like you. Durotan."

  "You have so much muscle your brain is starved," Durotan retorted. "Skill is as important as power. But the Blackrock clan wouldn't know about such things."

  There was no malice in their banter. Their clans had been troubled at first by the friendship between the two youths, but Durotan's stubborn argument—that just because something had never been done before did not mean it could not be done—amused and impressed the leaders of both clans. It helped that both the Frostwolves and the Blackrocks were both traditionally even-tempered orc clans. Had Durotan proposed such a friendship with a Warsong clan member or a Bonechewer, for example, known for their intense clan pride and distrust of others, the little flame of friendship would have died quickly. So the elders watched. and waited for the novelty to fade and for each youth to return to his rightful place and keep the familiar order that had been established for... as long as anyone could recall.

  They were disappointed.

  The frost of late winter had given way to spring and now the full blowsy warmth of summer, and the friendship continued. Durotan knew that they were watched, but as long as no one interfered, he did not object.

  Durotan closed his eyes and let his fingers spread over the moss. The shaman said that all things had a life, a power, a spirit. They were deeply involved with the spirits of the elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and the Spirit of the Wilds—and claimed they could sense the life force in earth and even seemingly dead stone. All Durotan could feel was the cool, slightly moist sensation of moss and soil beneath his palms.

  The earth shuddered. His eyes snapped open.

  He bolted upright, his hand automatically going for the spiked club that he constantly carried. Orgrim preferred a heavy metal and wood hammer, the traditional weapon of the Blackrocks and a simplified version of the legendary hammer that would one day come to him. The two boys exchanged glances. They did not need to speak to communicate. Was the thing that made the earth shake so an enormous clefthoof, with its shaggy pelt that made magnificent blankets and rich

  red flesh that could feed almost the whole clan, or was it something more dangerous?

  What did live in the Terokkar forest, anyway? They had been here only once before....

  They got to their feet in unison, their small dark eyes peering into the now ominous-seeming dark corners of the close-growing trees, searching for whatever had made the noise.

  Boom. The earth shuddered again. Durotan's heart started to beat faster. If it was a small clefthoof, maybe they could take it down together and share the spoils with both clans. He glanced over at Orgrim and saw the other's eyes gleam with excitement.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Crash.

  Both youths gasped and then retreated as the noise came closer. A tree only a few yards away from them seemed to splinter before their eyes. The thing that had made the noise and so casually dispatched an ancient tree suddenly came into view.

  It was enormous, it carried a club as big as they were, and it was most definitely not a clefthoof.

  And it had seen them.

  It opened its mouth and bellowed something that was vaguely intelligible, but Durotan wasn't about to waste time figuring out what it had said.

  Their thoughts as one, the two boys turned and fled.

  Now Durotan wished desperately that they had not decided to challenge one another to a race earlier, for his legs had not hilly recovered. Yet still they moved when he asked it of them, the need for survival lending him energy.

  How had they wandered so far into ogre territory? And where were the gronn? Durotan imagined one of the ogre's masters forcing its way through the trees as the ogre had—towering over ordinary ogres as ogres towered over the orcs,even more hideous than an ogre, more of the earth than of flesh and yet so terribly wrong, its one eye bloodshot and staring as it pointed at Durotan and Orgrim and directed the ogre toward it.

  He and Orgrim were not yet of the season where they would be initiated into adulthood and permitted to go with the warriors of the clans to hunt the ogres and, on rare occasions, the gronn themselves. They had gone on hunts that their clans had perceived as less dangerous, for talbuk and other easy prey, but Durotan had always yearned for the day when he would be allowed to tackle these fearsome creatures, winning honor for himself and his clan.

  Now, he wasn't so sure. The earth continued to tremble, and the shouts of the ogre were coming more clearly now.

  "Crush little ores! Me smash!" The roar that followed this almost made his ears bleed.

  The thing was gaining on them. Despite his brain's panicked orders to his body to run faster, faster curse

  you, he could not put any distance between him and the monstrous being that loomed so close that its vast shadow almost blotted out what little light filtered through the tree branches.

  The trees thinned and the light grew brighter. They were close to the edge of the forest now. Durotan kept running and burst into the open space of the meadow, his feet falling again on soft grass, Orgrim was ahead of him, but not by much. Despair washed through Durotan, followed hard by a black wave of fury.

  They were not yet adults! They had not gone on their first real hunt, they had not danced by the fire with the females, they had not bathed their faces in the steaming blood of their first solo kills. There was so much they had not done. To die a glorious death in battle was one thing, but Theywere so overpowered by the hideous creature as to make their deaths humorous rather than honorable.

  Knowing it could cost him precious seconds, but unable to resist the impulse, Durotan turned his head to scream a curse at the ogre before it smashed him as flat as a graincake with its club.

  What he saw made his jaw drop.

  Their rescuers did not utter a sound. They moved in silence, a quiet tide of blue and white and silver that seemingly sprang out of the very air. Durotan heard the familiar whine of arrows shrieking through the air and a heartbeat later the ogre's cries were tinged not with rage but with pain. Dozens of arrows, tiny things on that massive pale body, sprouted from it, and it halted its deadly progress. It yelled and tried to brush the irritations from its skin.

  A clear voice rang out. Even though he did not understand the language, Durotan recognized words of power when he heard them, and his skin prickled. Suddenly the sky was filled with lightning. But this was unlike any lightning Durotan had seen invoked by a shaman. Blue and white and silver energy crackled around the ogre, swirling about it and closing in on it like a net. The monster bellowed again and fell. The earth shook.

  Now the draenei, their bodies covered in some sort of metallic plating that reflected the cool hues of the magical energies in a display that dazzled Durotan's eyes, dismounted and descended upon the fallen ogre. Blades flashed, more words of power and command were uttered, and Durotan was forced to shut his eyes or be driven mad by the display.

  At last silence fell. Durotan opened his eyes again to see that the ogre was dead. Its eyes still stared, its tongue protruded from its parted lips, and its body was covered with red blood and black burn marks.

  So great was the silence that Durotan could hear his own ragged breathing and that of Orgrim. The two looked at each other, stunned by what they had just witnessed.

  Both had seen the draenei before, of course, but only at a distance. They came now and then to each

  clan, ready to trade their carefully crafted tools and weapons and decorative pieces of carved stone in exchange for the thick pelts of the forest animals, brightly w
oven blankets, and raw materials the ores culled from land and stone. It had always been an occasion of interest in the clans, but the exchanges only lasted a few hours. The draenei—blue-skinned, soft-spoken, eerily arresting—did not invite closeness, and no clan leader had ever asked them to stay and share their hospitality. Relationships were cordial but aloof, and everyone involved seemed to want it that way.

  Now the leader of the group that had arrived so unexpectedly strode over to Durotan. From his position on the earth, Durotan saw what he had never noticed when he had regarded the draenei from a distance.

  Their legs did not go straight from their torsos to the earth. They curved backward, like . . . like a talbuk's, and ended in cloven hooves that were encased in metal from the shiny blue hoof upward. And ... yes, it was most definitely a thick, hairless tail that swished back and forth. Now their owner was bending over him, offering a strong blue hand. Durotan blinked, staring a moment longer at the unexpected shape of the draenei's feet and the reptilian tail, then got to his feet unaided. He looked into a face that bore strange plating on its head, like armor that had grown there. Black hair and a beard flowed over a colorful tabard, and the piercing, glowing eyes were the color of a winter lake. "You are injured?" the draenei asked in halting common Orcish, his tongue obviously having trouble wrapping itself around the guttural syllables.

  "Only my pride," Durotan heard Orgrim mutter in his clan dialect. He, too, was somewhat stung. The draenei had obviously saved both their lives, and he was grateful of course. But they had seen two proud orc youths running from danger. Granted, that danger had been very real—one blow from that gigantic club would have squashed him and Orgrim into two small, crumpled piles—but still.

  The draenei may or may not have heard or understood Orgrim; Durotan thought he saw the lips curve in a smile. The draenei glanced skyward, and to his dismay, Durotan realized that the sun was low on the horizon.