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Part Two - The Journey North
VII
My years in Orcmar had not been happy. I’d run away
from home and come into the old orc capital (now another prideless
city-state) with nothing. It was a lawless place, even by comparison to
Storm City. Its day to day life was ruled by a trio of warring gangs,
whose leadership fit every scary stereotype of orcs and bulls and men
who were laws unto themselves. Although the Shadow Council (another
branch, another iteration of the Law; how had I missed it?) was
ostensibly the city’s government, it did little except declaring states
of emergency and curfews if the gang fights got too brutal. (Thusly
keeping any of the three from gaining the upper hand, thusly maintaining
the status quo... and again, I’d never seen it.) The curfews were
enforced with the gruesome, mysteriously unwitnessed deaths of anyone
that failed to comply. Fear of the Council was fear of the unknown.
Some weeks after arriving, I fell in with a guild
called Thrall’s Revenge. They were a group of young orcs, feeling
generally helpless in the Orcmar power structure, angry at it, and
xenophobic because of it. Their professed purpose was to reclaim Orcmar
for orcs, but they existed for survival. They idolized the city’s
ancient founder, or, at least, their idea of the city’s ancient founder.
They had believed me (and I’d meant it) when I’d said once to get out of
a scuffle with them that the Doomhammers and the Bloodhooves had sworn
an ancient allegiance, and that I stood by it. I joined up, and spent
several years with them. But I was barely out of calfhood, and when I
say I’d meant it, what I mean is that meaning it upped my chances of
survival. As the years passed and I’d grown less afraid and more
thoughtful, I’d decided that the Thrall my ancestors had sworn
allegiance to, the Thrall I’d learned about in my calfhood in Mulgore,
was not the Thrall that these people worshiped.
The Drag, ruled by the Black Dragons (of the city’s
three big gangs, the one most into the drama of being a gang) and run by
a vicious group of goblins, was also the city’s gambling hub. The
goblins had rows and rows of tight, rickety buildings set up, within
which were fights, and chicken races, and darts, and almost anything you
could imagine to place a bet on. So when I decided that the ideology and
methods of Thrall’s Revenge were juvenile and undesirable, I took the
high-minded step of stealing some silver from the group and disappearing
into the Drag. I went to work in one of the gambling stalls, collecting
the ante at a game of chips, and, as per the common practice, skimming
some off the top for myself. I should have built up a nice nest egg, but
of course I gambled it all, and more, away. Then I took the high-minded
step of running away again. I stowed away aboard an airship, and, a
month later, found myself in Storm City.
The Law was different here in the East. It acted
like a real government, passing judgments down through Fang to the rest
of us, and dealing with people that failed to abide by them. Not to say
that the seedy underworld wasn’t seedy, or a law unto itself, but it
operated within the bounds set forth by Fang.
For all the difference between the two cities – and
there was all the difference in the world – the Law, the Council, still
performed the same functions: it kept the cities small, weak, and in
stasis. It kept the old pride from reestablishing itself, from
reestablishing kingdoms, from being a powerful force in the world. For
six hundred years, I thought. For what?
The sound of branches snapping somewhere behind me
in the forest pulled me out of my thoughts. Something large was coming
towards us through the silent, pre-dawn forest, and making no secret of
it.
* * *
Katy M had subtly slid her thick hand over to her
mace. Her face was pointed down at the fire, but her eyes were locked
with mine, and they were full of stony silence. I raised a bushy eyebrow
at her, and she shook her head slightly. The crackling of branches and
leaves on the forest floor got louder and louder, approaching us, until
it was almost within our fire’s tiny ring of light. Katy had been slowly
gathering her legs under her, into springing position, and when the
sound was almost upon us she yelled, and leapt over the fire, and over
me (I ducked), landing behind me. Then she stopped yelling, and the
noise stopped as well.
“Well, g’mornin to you, too,” said a familiar
voice. I stood up and looked around. It was the dwarf from the Panda Pub
that had spoken at the meeting of the Dawn, perched on top of a light
brown, somewhat bedraggled ram.
“Madoran,” said M, “I’m sorry.” She bowed low as
the dwarf scrambled down off his mount.
“No need,” he said cheerily, “if yeh weren’t on yer
guard I’d think that much less of yeh!” He bowed back to the other
Tauren. “Mr. Horse,” he said, turning to me, “doing well enough?”
“I am,” I said awkwardly.
“Well, if ye weren’t, I wouldn’t think less of ye.
Quite a wholloping ye took before ye went down, so says Fang the
Murloc.” He turned back to Katy M. His joking manner disappeared,
along with much of his accent. “I will not mince words about why I am
here,” he said. “There are those within the Dawn who worry that your
motives and those of Fang are not those of the rest of the Dawn.”
“The elves!” I said. M glared at me, but I kept my
eyes on Madoran, who turned to me, slightly bemused.
“Aye,” he said cheerily, his accent returning for a
beat, “the elves.” He smiled and looked back at M. “I’m not here to get
in your way, though,” he said, “only to aid as I can.” He bowed back to
her. “An besides,” he said, jolly again, “what in Az could a dwarf with
an axe do against the druid twice his size?” He winked at me, imparting
some hidden meaning or other. I furrowed my heavy brow.
“Of course I appreciate your candor,” growled M
stiffly. “We were planning on leaving a few hours after sunrise, so you
may want to get some sleep if you haven’t already.” She might as well
have been talking to me, and I settled back down by the dying fire. The
sky was beginning to lighten, and the birds had woken up.
The dwarf sat down heavily next to the fire as
well, pulling off his gloves and rubbing his hands over the embers.
“Ah’ll do fine,” he said gruffly. “Haven’t had as much excitement
tonight as you folks. Just meetings.”
Katy M sat down across the fire from me. She had
looked more relaxed before when we had been chatting; I thought that the
chance to say what she wanted had relaxed her. Now she was again as I
had met her, two long days ago: glowering and wary. Between the carefree
dwarf and the careful tauren, I ought to be safe, I thought, and
promptly fell asleep.
* * *
Several hours later, I woke up, still a bit stiff
but feeling better. I’d dreamed some dreams, but nothing had stuck with
me, except for the unshakable feeling that a lot of fire, and loss, had
been involved.
M hadn’t moved, or changed position, or facial
expression. The dwarf Madoran was busy cinching his ram’s saddle. I sat
up.
“Good morning,” growled M. “If you’d slept any
longer I was going to start putting coals on your nose.”
“She’s not kidding,” said the dwarf, “I had to pry
coals out of her big hands, twice.” He sounded dead serious.
“We’re south of Storm City and across the river,”
said the bull, as though the other hadn’t said anything. “We need to go
north, without going through the City. There are paths, but they’re not
easy.”
“They involve lots of jumping,” said the dwarf,
ominously.
“Why not go through the City?” I said.
“We’d be better to keep a low profile,” M began to
say, but the dwarf interrupted her.
“Chaos in that place. Electricity’s out, I hear the
cults Underground are duking it out for control, now that the Murloc has
stepped down.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. Tidus and Rhy, I could
have warned them. Not that anyone had told me anything ahead of time…
“Nope. And the Murloc, who should know the most
about the whole thing, won’t say mum and won’t go impose order. Not that
any of us really know how he imposed order to begin with,” he muttered
as an afterthought.
Katy M had stood up, rather suddenly, while the
dwarf was talking. She loomed slightly, and I could feel her willfully
battling my urge to run to my friends, get them to safety, if I could. I
wilted slightly.
“Chaos,” muttered the dwarf darkly. “Lots of
buildings on fire, too.”
I jumped up, grabbed my backpack, and sprinted
towards the edge of the clearing. M shouted something after me. She
sounded scared. My thick hooves pounded against the forest floor,
propelling me forward. I tripped on a root, suddenly, that I hadn’t
seen, and landed heavily on my chest. I felt others grappling at me,
wrapping up and around me, and I gathered my arms under me and pushed
angrily up. I felt a couple of roots break, but more leapt out of the
forest floor, spraying black earth at me as they wrapped around my arms.
I squeezed my eyes shut and yelled. My body shrank, my ears stood
upright, and my flat molars elongated into enormous, protruding fangs.
My yell had turned into a growling hiss. I extended my claws against the
roots, flexed my spine, and wiggled out of the entangling roots as a
cat. I concentrated again, lengthening my legs and face, flattening my
teeth, and pounding off into the living forest, a horse again.
I kept the sun to my back, going north, as Katy M
had said. The trees began to thin in front of me, and I pounded forward.
Suddenly, the forest disappeared out from under me, and I plunged,
hooves first, into a rapidly flowing river. I caught a brief glimpse of
Storm City, smoke rising from it in the distance, the nearest buildings
standing on the far bank, and then I plunged under water. My slender
legs, perfect for moving me on land, kicked helplessly at the current. I
pulled myself together, literally, and kicked across the current with my
powerful tauren arms and legs. I felt my cloak pulling around my neck,
and I flicked it off. It drifted quickly away from me, downstream, and
around a bend. My head plunged under water for a moment, and I choked,
and kicked, and when I regained the surface, I was at the far side of
the river.
I sunk my fingers into the bank, and hauled myself
out. The air was acrid here, and ash fell through the air. It reminded
me of Orcmar, but here it felt ominous, out of place. I re-horsed, and
galloped into the city.
VIII
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