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II
I opened my eyes. I was sitting up, jaw clenched, shaking with controlled rage. Katy M was standing at the foot of the bed, looking sad, sympathetic, compassionate, all the things I didn’t want to see on the face of my tormentor.
“Horse,” she said, “please understand—”
"You lied to me," I gritted.
M narrowed her eyes. "Point of fact, we didn't," she said, bristling slightly. "We tend to choose our words very carefully."
“You lied!” I cried. “You sent me north to protect a book! You lied about the book, and the Argent Dawn, and the frozen tomb, and everything!”
“Throne,” she said. I stared. “It was never a tomb.”
“What?” I said dumbly.
“We never got around to telling you about the book, or the Dawn,” she continued, still bristling, “or the frozen throne – thanks in part to your own actions, if you recall.”
I creased my forehead, irritated. “And thanks to you conveniently dying half way through the trip,” I spat. “And leaving me with a dwarf who believed in me! He thought I was there to do the right thing…” I trailed off, choking on sudden guilt.
“Horse,” said M, “I didn’t think it would happen that way.”
“Ha,” I grunted. “Then who did? Did the Law know?”
M blinked slowly. She was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.
Fang had appeared in the room’s doorway. My stomachs clenched at the sight of him, as a memory’s echo of mental violation returned. “Don’t know what?” he said.
“Nothing,” muttered M. “We have to go,” she said, to me.
“Then go,” I gritted.
M sighed. “You have to come with us,” she said patiently. “We’re no longer safe here, and you’re not safe anywhere.”
Nemesis, I thought. After that display, I was sure Varimathras would be after me. For a moment, I accepted her implication, that I should stay with them for my own safety. Then I remembered whose will had been driving my voice when I’d said it. Oh so convenient.
I had to escape, to get away from these two – they were manipulative question marks at best, and apocalyptic maniacs at worst. My curiosity had been finally sated, beaten to death by bald, unapologetic mind-control and by a thousand-foot fall from a crystalline spike. I was tired of their ever more dangerous, ever less sensical games. I wanted out.
I thought fast. I could feel the blanket against the bare skin of my legs: I wasn’t wearing any pants. I looked down. No shirt, either. “I need to get dressed,” I said sullenly.
M, with Screech perched atop her head, cleared out respectfully. Fang eyed me suspiciously, or knowingly, but followed her.
I stood. My clothes were at the foot of the bed, washed and folded neatly. I shook them out and hurriedly pulled them on. Ajax poked his head out from under the bed, and I scooped him up. He clambered up onto my shoulder, seeming to sense the urgency. My pack was at the foot of the bed: I pulled it up, crated Ajax, and hefted the thing onto my back.
The window curtains were thick and heavy, although bright sunlight streamed in around them. I pulled them aside. The sun, off the horizon but not high in the sky, blinded me as I hauled with all my strength at the bottom pane. My captors had locked it. I swore.
I turned back to the room, scanning it, looking for something with which to escape. My eyes rested on the bed-side table.
I hefted it, the legs aimed forwards like battering rams, braced the table against my shoulder, and charged at the window. With a crash, the window exploded outward, glass falling away.
“Horse!” bellowed M’s commanding voice from the next room, and I fell to all fours. I inhaled the full capacity of my lungs, swelled my body, lowered my head and charged towards the light, a heavy, thick-skinned bear. “Horse!” cried M again, throwing the door open behind me. I crashed through the window’s wooden frame, bellowing with pain and freedom as I sailed out of the second story window and away from the house.
I landed heavily on the ground. My foot-pads stung and my legs buckled. I tasted ash for a moment, and as I struggled to regain my footing I stretched out my legs, and neck, and face. I stood and turned, a gray stallion now. M was leaning out of the shattered window frame yelling at me, and Fang stood below with a glint in his murloc eye, and I turned and galloped off.
“Horse!” cried M after me. “It’s not safe!”
“He’ll be fine!” shouted Fang, laughing. “He’s following his own will for once!”
Fang’s parting jab stung for a moment, but it was quickly replaced by a sense of foreboding. About me, slowly creeping into my awareness, were the blackened and twisted remains of buildings, of homes, burned to the ground. Acrid smoke still rose from distant ruins. They reminded me starkly of my last hours in Storm City, but, more concretely, more forebodingly, and just at the edge of my consciousness, they reminded me of something else as well.
And I looked up, and ahead of me loomed a too-familiar cliff wall, broken by a great gash of a canyon, carved out of sandstone by ancient winds and rains. It was the north wall of the slum canyons, and the blackened twisted scenery through which I galloped was the charred remains of Rocktusk. I was in Orcmar, the old capital of the Orcs, founded by Thrall the Fair on a foundation of shadow. I tossed my long equine neck about, to catch a glimpse over my shoulder: behind me rose the great, eternal gate of Old Orgrimmar: the Drag, and the evil Cleft from which the Shadow Council – the Law – had ruled. Its rule had kept Orcmar’s warring factions barely in line, and its evaporation had surely cast the city into inevitable, irrevocable chaos, to which the abandoned ruins of the Rocktusk district bore grim testament.
At the base of the cliff, I cantered to a stop. I was running from the bull and the murloc, but ahead of me were the slums, and I had made enemies there in my brief stay six years prior. Whether they were still alive or not, I had no interest in discovering.
I turned west, away from the sun, towards the great river which formed Orcmar’s western border, and galloped along the cliff.
It was nearly noon when I reached the river. The crisp – though not cold – Orcmar winter air bit into my long, dry equine throat. The cliff had leveled out half a mile back.
The river was low and muddy this time of year – the water which would feed it in spring was now locked in snow, north atop Kali’s mightiest mountains. I gazed towards them, past Orcmar’s foothills, to where they stood, a smudge on the horizon.
I bent down to the water, sipping at the surface, trying to get a mouthful, but it was too silty. I pawed plaintively at the river’s edge, but the river gods did not hear me, and no deluge of fresh water cascaded downstream to slake my thirst.
I looked over my shoulder, back at once had been a bustling metropolis. Since leaving the murloc and the bull, I hadn’t seen a living being. I had seen several unidentifiable corpses, days or weeks old, and I had heard a few noises which might or might have been made by civilized or once-civilized things. The District had been almost entirely destroyed: only a few houses, like the one I’d woken up in, remained intact. I wondered where the people, the thousands of middle-class Rocktusk residents, had disappeared to.
I suddenly noticed something that I’d missed before: hanging in the sky to the north and east was the smallest fingernail sliver of white. It looked like the moon, I thought, but most of it was gone. I stared, my mind casting about for an explanation. I had witnessed the moon cease its ceaseless journey across the sky, battered into submission by a barrage of demon-fire. Now it seemed to have lost most of itself. I wondered if Hannathras’s fireballs had shattered the moon entirely, if it had been slowly breaking up while I had slept. The remnant’s edge wasn’t jagged, though – it was soft, like the edge of a shadow.
I shook my head and turned, and galloped south along the river.
I had no particular destination: only, away. I was south and west of where I had begun, and there seemed no reason to stop. But something subtle, subconscious, was drawing me forward as well.
I passed slowly out of the ruined city. Now, leaving the desolation of Rocktusk and Orcmar behind, I began to see people: a few, alone, looking frayed and harried and hungry, far inland where they would not draw attention or safe across the muddy river.
Soon, I saw more – small families now, mothers with infants, fathers with children, huddled under rocks and blankets. They were refugees, and had been for some time. Even at a distance I could tell that they were emaciated. I galloped on, passing them an honorary measure of guilt at not stopping and helping where I could.
The sun sank over the river to the west, turning orange the tall brown grasses there, and lending a dull glow to the already-orange rocks to the east. As the afternoon sank into evening, I saw a distant city of tents across the river to the south.
In the gathering dusk, I found a patch of deep shadow behind a rock and shifted back into a bull. I rubbed the back of my neck. It always got sore if I spent too long as a horse.
The sun had sunk below the horizon, but as I glanced at the rock behind which I hid, I saw a ghost of a shadow – my shadow. I turned, to the north and east, to where the slivered remnant of the moon had hung at midday, and I gasped. It hung there still, but it had waxed: fully half of the great white moon I had known all my life hung against the darkening blue sky. I shook my head in wonder.
A moment later, my eye caught a blue glow from the eastern horizon, and the blue moon, which I had seen only once before from the top of a narrow crystalline spike, peeked over the horizon.
“What are you?” I muttered at it. “What do you mean?” I didn’t like to believe in omens, but moons were not born out of moons every day, and the light from this moon had somehow served to shatter the bonds of –
I shook my head. The blue moon stared across the rocky wastes at me, answering none of my questions. I felt suddenly lonely.
Small fires had begun to spring up in the tent city to the south. There were people there, I thought. I fell to all fours and galloped south again.
There were at least two hundred small tents. They began on the far side of the river, up the bank and a few short yards into the wintry brown grasslands. They flickered orange in the light of torches and sweet-smelling campfires. The camp hummed softly with activity, with low voices, meetings among friends, and of the crackling of friendly fires. I looked longingly across, wishing myself a boat, but none appeared, and the settling night chill spoke firmly against setting hoof in the river’s muddy water. I walked on.
My hooves clattered suddenly on cobblestone: I had come to a road. There’s only one paved road in these lands, I thought: the one west to the Crossroads. I’d passed this way only once, years ago, on my first journey to Orcmar, but I remembered it clearly: there was a bridge here, over the river, which had stuck in my memory. It had been ancient but solid, arched and covered in painted canvas.
I turned towards the river. The shadow of a structure stood, dark in the darkness. I moved towards it.
The bridge was still there, but it was shattered and charred. Blackened remnants of its proud awnings flapping listlessly against the evening breeze. I halted at its base.
On the far side, moored beneath the bridge’s far end, was a wide, rough-hewn raft, cast in flickering shadows from the torches beyond. A pole stuck out of the mud next to it. Maybe I won’t have to get muddy, I thought.
“Hello?” I called.
After a moment, a short, scruffy-faced human stepped down to the shore. “Who’s there?” he called back.
“My name’s Horse,” I called.
“What’s your business?” he returned.
I paused. “Hoping for news from a friendly face,” I called back.
The man turned and walked away. I sighed.
A minute later, he returned with three others, another human, taller and less scruffy than the first; a hunched troll, his skin blue and his hair red; and what looked like a great, furry, bipedal bear.
They mounted the raft. The scruffy human pulled the pole out of the mud with a squelch, and pushed the raft into the lazily-flowing river. The four of them eyed me mistrustfully.
The raft came to rest in the mud on the near side, a few feet downstream. Its passengers leapt off and approached me. The men led the way. Behind them slouched the troll, leering hungrily at me, and the upright bear creature. Up close I recognized his race: he was a furbolg, one of the denizens of Kali’s dark northern mountains. Few ever emerged, but those that did often made names for themselves as expert craftsmen or businessmen.
The four of them surrounded me menacingly. “Where are you coming from?” growled the larger man.
I paused. I had woken up, captive, in a ruined city, with no real knowledge of what had happened to it. It wasn’t a good story to tell these four, I thought, or at least it was too convoluted. How did you get there? I imagined them asking. Dunno, I’d have had to answer.
“I’m heading west to Crossroads,” I said. “I guess there’s news I wasn’t aware of, though,” I finished, gesturing across the river with my head. “I don’t remember a city here last time I came by.”
“Yeah, a little news,” laughed the scruff-faced man coldly. “Where have you been that you don’t hear when a new moon appears and a city burns?”
I glanced at him. Surely the city had burned weeks before the blue moon was born?
“Look at how well-fed he is,” growled the troll, poking me. “I bet he works for the gang!”
“I don’t work for anyone,” I growled back.
“Not any more, I reckon,” said the man. There was a hint of what could have been sympathy in his voice. “Follow us,” he grunted, reaching up to seize my shoulder and shoving me towards the shore.
I stepped onto the raft. The others surrounded me, and the scruffy man pushed off the bank. We floated across the river, and leapt off at the far bank. The taller man and the furbolg guided me forward, along the cobblestone road and into the tent city, holding me firmly by the shoulders. “Welcome to New Rocktusk,” said the man wryly.
Faces turned to look as we passed. There were humans and trolls, orcs, a few blood elves, and more than one tauren. But they were all thin, and the gaunt, harried, empty looks in their eyes and on their faces cut across the crude lines drawn by race. These were the refugees of a different time. When I had lived in Orcmar for a few short years, I had resented these people their wealth, their comfort, and wished them all manner of ills. But I had lost my home, and my friends; I had lost my life and its calm, boring little delivery job. My world had burned, at the careless hands of the Law, and so had theirs. I would have traded all the excitement in the world for another day of easy boredom for these people.
A hundred paces in, we stopped in front of a tent. This one was a proper canvas one, with a flap for a door and a fire crackling inside. The larger man pushed the flap open, and stepped inside. The furbolg followed, and the troll pushed me forward.
I ducked low through the flap. On the other side of the fire was chair, the first I’d seen in the camp. On it sat an older orc, wisps of white hair above a strong but lined face. Flanking him was a pair of what must have been guards: a young, thick orc and a younger, thinner human woman.
“Who’s this?” said the old orc wearily, looking up from his chair.
“Found him across the river, m’lord” said the short, scruffy man from behind us. He poked his head around us. “Asked for news from a friendly face.”
“Wouldn’t tell us where he come from,” grunted the troll. “I say we make hamburgers tonight,” he added, leering up at me.
“We are civilized people,” growled the old orc at the troll. “What’s your name, bull?”
“Horse,” I said.
“Huh,” he grunted in reply. “Mine is Statton,” he continued, dignified. “Until the world rights itself or falls apart completely, this is my camp.”
“Statton,” I repeated. It was a funny name for an orc.
The old orc smiled. “You were expecting something else? Something Orcish, with hard K-sounds and guttural rasps? I am a citizen of Rocktusk.”
I nodded respectfully. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded. “You are welcome here, for now. We can offer you news, in the morning, and a hard bed and some protection from outsiders tonight,” he continued, “in exchange for your help with our labors tomorrow. We don’t have the luxury of charity, I’m afraid.”
I nodded.
“Give him a loaf of bread and a place to sleep,” said Statton to the man that had brought me in. He turned back to me. “Come see me in the morning when you wake up.”
The place to sleep was a spot of ground. The loaf of bread was small and hard, but I ate it hungrily. I lay down and pulled my blanket over me.
My legs, my sides, my back and my neck hurt. So did my head. It had been a long day, and I hadn’t had rest to let the enormity of what had happened sink in.
I had run away from the bull and the murloc, from the Law entirely. It had been too much, I told myself firmly. They had asked too much faith in a suicidal, apocalyptic mission.
I shook my head. Somewhere to the north, underneath the white, still-waxing moon, was a Scourge Lord, ready to make war on the living world, thanks to me. Maybe his war had already begun – no one had told me anything, least of all the bull and the murloc. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to go away.
Fang’s parting jab surfaced in my memory. He’s following his own will for once! I ground my wide molars in frustration. I had unwillingly followed his will off the edge of a thousand foot drop, I thought, and the damned amphibian had actually made fun of me for it. I felt slighted like a playground calf on the wrong end of a prank.
As part of my mind railed against his pointless cruelty, another part began replaying my journey. I had been all but kidnapped, drafted from my stagnant life into service on a quest which I did not understand, for forces which I could not comprehend. I been a commander for a short time in Ironforge – carrying out the clearly prescribed will of a greater mind than my own. I had dutifully followed Madoran north, and believed the twisting words of Ordinn. I cursed the Lawdwarf’s name. His lies had caused me to forsake Madoran, and Rhy, and to lead the evil Hannathars directly to the book. Ordinn’s fault, I thought. Not mine.
Words from a dream I’d had the night before we flew north, the night before Katy M had disappeared off the edge of a cliff, came back to me. “Help or hinder; fate or free will;” said the voice of a great metal giant in my memory. “The choice is yours.”
I’d chosen to follow. Maybe it was my fate I’d chosen, or maybe it was just a series of random, bad decisions. I didn’t know. But I realized that, inescapably, every step of the journey had been mine to take. No one had forced me to go back to the mansion, to go north, to go into Under City with Rhy. My choice.
As I lay on the cold, trampled grass, staring up at the sky, Fang’s parting words took on a new meaning. He’d been cheering me on, I thought. Cheering me on as I took my will back into my own hands, and flatly disobeyed his orders. It made no sense, and it was cold comfort after all.
I looked up at the white moon. It was nearly full, now. I had given up trying to understand it. Maybe someone would explain in the morning.
With the general hope that someone would explain everything in the morning, I rolled over, tucked my pack under my head, and went to sleep.
III
(Discuss chapter)
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