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VII
The sod sprung beneath my hooves. I had forded the Bloodhoof River, climbed out the far side and flew off again across the green plains. My hooves pounded against the ground, pushing the world backward, pushing me forward, their sound muffled by the sod and by the rain. Silent mist swirled around me and I flew through it. Saliva flecked at my mouth. My nostrils flared and I sucked air in, through my long nose, filling my lungs. It smelled like home, like my childhood, like dirt and grass and mist. I shook rainwater out of my eyes.
Home, I thought. If it’s anywhere, it’s here. But I knew couldn’t stay, not yet. The day I’d run away, my last confrontation with my old mentor, burned in my mind. I couldn’t face my mother. Not yet.
Fang had asked me to join them, to become an Agent. To work for the Law. What is the Law, I thought, that I would want to join it? What has it done for me? For the world?
The gaunt faces of the homeless masses of New Rocktusk floated through my mind, the men and women and children, the orcs and the humans and the trolls. The face of the old woman to whom I had given my food, her look of desperate, utterly misplaced gratitude, twisted in me like a knife. I’m sorry, I thought to her, and to Jessica, and to all the rest. What if the Law could help me repay my unpayable debt to them?
They weren’t my fault, I thought desperately. Remember? They set their own dumb houses on fire. And ran away. Turned the world to madness.
“Thankssss,” hissed an evil voice in my memory. “Couldn’t have found it without you.” Hannathras had floated out of the dark library, clutching the book I’d sworn to keep from him. I had led him right to it. I had led him right to it.
The Law, the murloc and the bull, they’d fooled me, and I owed them no loyalty. Wrong or right, I owed them nothing now. And they had the nerve to ask me to join them! They had tricked me and lied to me, moving me into place like so many chess pieces. Those people had died because of the Law.
The deep voice of my old mentor Hokato, gentle but stern, came back to me, speaking the first lesson he had ever taught me. He’d made me repeat it until I could say it in my sleep: “Every step you take is your own to make. Your smallest choice moves the world. With the smallest step you take,” we’d said, “you move the world.”
Knowing or no, I had signed their death warrants.
But, to unite the world. They had died, but, maybe for the greater good?
They had died. Knowing or no, I had signed their death warrant. Justifying it made it as good as knowing – justifying it said, if I could do it over, I’d do it all again. Their lives were not mine to end for any good. It felt horribly wrong, horribly and twistedly wrong.
The sod sprung beneath my hooves. The mist swirled thicker, and the rain soaked me to the skin. Steam rose off my heaving flanks. I sucked in air through my flared nostrils. It smelled like home. I wanted to go home, to lie down in my long-enough bed and fall asleep, to wake up to my mother making waffles.
The deep voice of my old mentor Hokato came back to me, speaking the last words I’d ever heard him say. “You are bringing shame to your family. If you run, if you leave,” he’d said, “don’t come back until you can undo that. Don’t come back unless you bring great honor with you.”
Not yet, I thought. I can’t face her yet.
If not now, when? In fifty years when she’s too old to see me? In five hundred, when her very gravestone has crumbled to dust? Could I trade it, could I trade my home for the world?
But Fang hadn’t said I couldn’t come back. He’d said it was my choice to make. He’d said he just wanted me to have all the information. How considerate.
I don’t need all the information, I thought. I can’t face her yet. She thinks I’m dead. She thinks I slipped off and died, not that I ran away foolishly, stupidly, and brought shame upon the family. I couldn’t just reappear. Not yet.
The sod sprung beneath my hooves, and I pounded on through the misting rain. The day I’d run away, the day I’d had my last confrontation with my mentor, burned in my mind.
* * *
The night before I'd run, I'd snuck downstairs, peeking my head over the banister and into the kitchen. I’d heard someone enter and begin speaking to my mother, later in the evening than she ever had visitors.
Hokato sat across the table from her. They were drinking tea.
“He failed the first test,” said the old bull. It was true, and I gritted my teeth in shame.
“He didn’t tell me,” replied my mother, sadly.
Of course I didn’t, mom, I thought. What would you do, scold me to do better? And then run off to the graveyard, and talk to dad for the rest of the day?
“He’s been having a lot of trouble lately,” continued the old bull. “He refuses to focus. He’s not coming along as well as I’d hoped.” I don’t want to focus on your stupid religion, I thought.
“He’s young and stubborn,” said my mother kindly. “Remember the student he was a few years ago. Give him time?”
“I intend to,” said the old bull quietly. “But I can only teach the willing.”
“You can lead Horse to water,” nodded my mother, smiling. Hokato laughed.
I whirled about and snuck back up the stairs, breathing heavily. I closed the door to my bedroom as quietly as I could, shaking violently.
When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed a strange dream. “The gods of your ancestors have fallen silent,” said a voice. “The father-wind blows for you, no longer.” I saw the great green grasses of Mulgore, waving gently. “These are not things in which you have faith,” continued the voice, and the grass wilted in the fierce sun. “The wind and the moon are not your gods. Your teacher fails to teach you!” Rain clouds blew past, but it did not rain. “You have come to an impasse, and he will guide you no further.
“You feel shame,” continued the voice, and I was outside, lying in a dead, rocky land, staring up at the dark gray sky through eyes which I could not shut. “You feel anger,” said the voice. Lightning flickered behind the clouds. “You feel injustice. You cannot drive them from your mind!” Thunder rumbled, and rain splashed down into my eyes. “You’ve lost your way, and no one here can help you find it.”
Then a figure was standing above me, facing away, up towards the angry sky. Black feathers lined his hood and cloak, and he leaned a silver staff. A bolt of lightning arced across the sky behind him and rain poured down and he turned, suddenly, pointing at me. “Run,” he said, “run away. You have lost your path: they can help you, no longer.”
I gasped awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. My bedroom window had blown open in the pouring rain. A black raven sat in the window, staring down at me out of one narrowed, golden eye, and it then turned and flew off, into the dark night.
I grabbed my backpack and stuffed a change of clothes into it. I snuck downstairs into the dark house, grabbed some food and left. Everything the dream had said to me was true: I felt irrationally hurt, and angry and uncertain. The failed test – shape-shifting into a cat, which I could never quite perfect – had only made it worse. Anchorless, I pushed off.
There was a familiar keen, from the night sky, and a moment later a great blue heron landed in front of me.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.
The heron, wisest of birds, tipped its long, narrow head at me. It began growing, its wings turning to arms and its long, thin legs swelling and claws turning to hooves. A moment later, Hokato stood before me.
“You were watching us tonight,” he said.
I stared sullenly at him, unwilling to talk, unwilling to let my mind be changed.
“It took me years,” he said gently, “to get my cat right. Years. You’ve been trying for three months.”
I stared at him. Years? “I don’t care about that,” I lied. “I don’t care about the stupid cat form.” I inhaled, and then, frustration building inside me, I hurled everything I’d ever thought about the old man and his nature-worship. “I’m sick of the training,” I gritted, “I’m sick of the classes and the tests. I’m sick of sitting in the middle of the plains in the middle of the night waiting for the, father wind, spirit moon mother to talk to me!” I was breathing heavily. Behind me, the house was silent.
Hokato shook his head. “You’re rash and proud,” he said sternly. “You expect mastery in months, you want to move the world tomorrow! Have patience,” he continued, gently, kindly. “There is greatness in you, but it needs to be nurtured.”
I stared at him. I’ll make myself great, I almost said. I narrowed my eyes. “I’m leaving,” I declared finalistically. “I’m going east.”
The old bull’s face fell. The sad look in his eyes twisted in me like a knife, but I steeled myself against it.
He stared at me through those eyes, silent, watching me. I looked away, but then I looked back. “I’m leaving,” I repeated. “Please don’t tell anyone,” I added quietly. Why did I care?
“If you run,” he growled, “you abdicate your responsibility to your herd, to your tribe. You wallow in selfish cowardice if you let your own foolish uncertainty sweep you into the Nether.” I was silent, but he watched my eyes and read me. “If you run,” he growled, “you are bringing shame to your family. If you run, if you leave, don’t come back until you can undo that. Don’t come back unless you bring great honor with you. I will not be the one to break your dishonor to your mother,” he finished, eyes narrowed in stern fury.
I set my jaw, and then inhaled deeply and pulled my body into the shape of a horse. I galloped off, but as I ran, I looked back over my shoulder, watching as my dark house faded into the distance and the night. My old mentor stood, watching me go – then a great blue heron stood – and then it was gone.
* * *
He had kept his promise, it seemed. He must have lied, told everyone I had died – and in my mind, a funeral procession bore my carved stone north out of town and into the graveyard, setting it in its place at the south end of my family tree. A vivid image of my mother, clad in black, unnecessarily mourning my false death, flashed across my mind, and with it came a wave of bitter enmity towards my old mentor.
But it wasn’t his fault, was it? It was mine. Déjà vu.
And my thought, my spectacularly adolescent thought that I would go and make myself great: how had I done? I hadn’t done a damn thing, not a damn thing on my own other than run away, for the last ten years. Fang’s parting jab floated to mind. If it’s not the last time you run away, there won’t ever be a last time. I gritted my teeth.
I did more than run, I thought. I managed to lead Hannathras right to the black book. And, apparently as planned, he had resurrected the Scourge Lord. Apparently, to unite the world.
Of course, it’s more complicated than that, said Fang. There’s more to it than just that. More questions, more puzzles and mysteries. Curiosity burned.
But however much more, it was certainly to unite the world, against him, to defeat him. Right? I thought. What else can the might of the whole world together do but triumph? It did once, six hundred years ago. This time it might do it right. This time, I might do it right.
I could pay my debt to the Orcmar refugees. I could be a hero, and stand tall atop the world, and they would know me. I could bring honor to my family, and I could stand to face my mother again. I could follow the Law, and I could be a hero, like the old days – larger than life, with songs sung about me down through the ages – but not a hero of a people, or of a city or an army – but a hero of Az.
The sod sprung beneath my hooves. I cantered now, slower and steadier. I inhaled, through my flared nostrils and into my lungs. It smelled like sod, like turf, like my childhood. Like a part of the world.
* * *
In the end, it was Ajax that finally convinced me.
The land had risen, and the mist had subsided to the west. I’d cantered to a stop at the Red Rocks, the spine of rusty limestone jutting out at the eastern edge of Mulgore. At its base was an old graveyard, with a few splintered sticks still sticking out of the ground at unnaturally even intervals.
I sat on the rocks above, looking out across the shaded green plains, to where they disappeared in the low evening mist. The sun sank to the west. I felt lonely.
I pulled off my pack and opened it. The last half of Matt the Gnome’s loaf of bread was sitting on top, and I ate it. I pulled Ajax’s white crate out and set it on the ground.
He climbed out, orange against the orange rocks, and looked up at me, ears twitching.
“Hey buddy,” I said. “Wanna live forever?”
He jerked his head around at some sound, looking over his shoulder, tensed as though ready to pounce, and then strolled casually off. I leaned back against my pack and watched him.
He’d be okay, I thought – as long as there were mice and bugs to chase. He wouldn’t mind. Cats only live to be fifteen, I thought. That’s a lot sooner than forever.
I sighed. The sun sank slowly below the horizon. Out across the plains of my childhood, shadows lengthened until they merged with that of the horizon. Ajax trotted out from behind a rock, a dead mouse dangling from his mouth by the tail.
“You won’t run out of those any time soon,” I said to him as he settled down next to me to feast. “Not for a couple hundred years, at least.” He purred. I felt a little less lonely.
VIII
(Discuss chapter)
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