World of Warcraft

by Steve Danuser

  “No,” said Taruka.

  Harooka grunted angrily, but the anger was not directed toward the younger tuskarr. She sank heavily on one knee, drew her filleting knife—a slender length of carefully sharpened whale tooth—and swept aside a layer of snow to scratch out a rough map in the ice beneath. The ivory point cut the shape of the coast from the current camp to Kamagua, and a large island to the southwest. Replacing the knife, Harooka drew with her gloved finger a line that went out from the shore and around the island, rejoining the mainland well to the north.

  “No one has told you to sail the longer way? Around Praak Island, like this?” she asked. “You know you must not cut through Lyquokk Strait?”

  “No,” replied Taruka. “No one told me. Why?”

  “There is death there,” said Harooka. “Avoid it.”

  She got up, huffing so much her moustache blew up almost to her eyes, clapped Taruka on the shoulder, and strode back down the slope toward the landing place.

  Taruka watched her and wondered about the warning. Was it honest advice? Or had the others sent Harooka because she was the one Taruka was most likely to believe? The more she thought about it, the more suspicious she became. It was likely the best fishing was in Lyquokk Strait, and the others would arrive in Kamagua with their boats full to the gunwales with fresh fish, and at least a day earlier than her as well. They didn’t want competition, even from one small tuskarr.

  “I’ll show them,” whispered Taruka. “I will catch more fish. Bigger fish than anyone.”

  Dinner with Taruka’s mother and sister was, as had happened all too often recently, not a happy occasion. Unka sulked because she was disappointed not to get the kite silk, and Makusha hardly ate before she resumed expertly embroidering an undershirt, leaning close to make best use of the light from the whale-oil lamp. Though she didn’t say anything, she didn’t have to—her body language was clear. It took longer to earn knots from doing fine embroidery. In a week or so, the undershirt would be finished, and it would fetch enough to get Unka the kite silk. Makusha had taught Taruka to sew, and though she was not as skilled as her mother, the two of them working together could finish an undershirt every two or three days.

  It was much more certain than fishing, if less respected among the clan.

  “I will catch many fish on the way to Kamagua,” announced Taruka, answering her mother’s unspoken criticism. “You will get your kite silk, Unka, and Mother will have the tusk polish she likes.”

  Unka covered her head with her sleeping furs and pretended to be asleep. Makusha emitted a noise that could be taken as either encouragement or doubt, more likely the latter, and continued sewing. Taruka snorted, a very clear expression of discontent, and left the tent.

  Outside, the sky had turned purple and dull orange. It never got properly dark this far north. A few brightly colored kites were swooping overhead, flown by some of the older children who were not exhausted by the day’s work.

  Taruka went to the sled and checked the loading. Everything was in its proper place; the harness was ready to be hitched to a seal or another sled. The clan had only six draft seals, so each would pull three or four sleds.

  One package on the sled attracted her particular attention, as it always did, lying in pride of place atop the load. A scabbard longer than she was tall, made of the best sealskin, decorated with buttons carved from whalebone. It contained the only other possession her father had left the family, apart from the mast the sea had returned. His cherished spear, which he had almost never used. The spear was very old and very special. Taruka remembered him telling her that, though it was many years ago now and she had been younger than Unka.

  He had said, “If I need the spear, Oacha’noa will tell me so.”

  “Yes,” said a voice. It sounded close to Taruka’s ear, but also strangely distant at the same time. The voice made her moustache hairs stand up and her tusks ache, and she looked wildly about her for whoever could possibly be talking and could cause such an effect.

  But there was no one. Apart from the kite-fliers farther up the vale, the camp was quiet. Everyone was eating their dinner or had already gone to sleep.

  Did I imagine the voice? Taruka asked herself. But she was sure she had heard it, and it had seemed to answer a question—a question she had not asked. Or had she? It had come at the exact moment she remembered her father talking about the spear, and Oacha’noa, the goddess of wisdom …

  A breeze suddenly roared around the sled, picking up ice crystals in a miniature whirlwind before depositing them at Taruka’s fur-wrapped feet. Instinctively, from her own kite-flying days, she looked at the kites. A gust like that could easily break a string … but the kites sailed peacefully overhead. There had been no gust of wind up there.

  She looked down. The ice crystals had made a pattern there, a rough symbol in the shape of a kraken.

  The mark of Oacha’noa!

  “I am to take the spear?” asked Taruka in a very small voice. She felt like she was a babe again, asking for a sweetcake.

  The wind came howling back, scattering the shards of ice to destroy the pattern it had made, and then as quickly as it came, it stopped. The air was still again.

  Taruka reached up and took down the scabbarded spear.

  Taruka left very early the next morning. Makusha and Unka were still snoring away in the tent, tightly wrapped in their sleeping furs. Outside, no one else was stirring. Though dawn did not so much break as gradually brighten, it was light enough to see, light enough for Taruka to set forth.

  It was also cold, but not especially so for a tuskarr in furs and oilskins. By the time she got down to the landing place, Taruka was even hot, so she unlaced her gloves and boots a little to let some air in. She had left her boat ready the day before, as always, but still had to stow her net and the spear. She had not taken the weapon from its scabbard; it did not seem right to do so. It was not yet time. She tied it in place next to her very ordinary spear, alongside the gunwale on the port side.

  It looked to be a good sailing day. A light breeze was already blowing from the southeast, and it would probably strengthen. Taruka shoved off from the jetty and rowed her boat out between the larger vessels anchored close by. Once clear of them, she raised headsail and mainsail, trimmed them to gain the best point of sailing, and steered for the north. She glanced behind her once as she settled by the tiller. A couple of the other tuskarr were preparing their boats, one of them Onaaka. He shouted something after her, but the wind blew his words away.

  She hugged the coast going north, keeping it in sight, instinctively noting her speed by observing the fragments of ice that floated past. There was no danger of icebergs yet. That would come in spring, when the frozen sea to the north broke up and the ice floated south.

  The southeast corner of Praak Island came into distant view before noon, and her current course would take her closer to it than the mainland. Taruka hesitated for several minutes before going about on the opposite tack to strike northeast, steering directly into Lyquokk Strait.

  All the time, she was watching for signs of fish. A disturbance of the surface like unseen rain falling, or silver shapes jumping, or a gathering of seabirds. But the sea gave no such indications; there was only the long, regular swell, with the tops of the waves chopped up a little by the wind. The breeze had strengthened, enough to send her boat along with every stay humming, the sails taut. If it blew harder, she would have to take in a reef or even lower a sail, but for the moment it was a very fair wind for Kamagua.

  An hour later, as Taruka gauged she must be halfway up the strait, the wind suddenly increased though there were no clouds, and she had not seen the characteristic movement on the water. Taruka lowered and furled the main, half-thrilled at the speed she was making, half-worried the wind had increased without warning.

  There were still no signs of any fish. Taruka peered about her, ignoring the cold spray flying into her face, from the bow piercing the wave tops. In answer to the wind, th
e sea was becoming rougher, the swell no longer so regular and even.

  She saw something off to port, wiped her eyes with the back of a glove, and looked again. There was a shadow under the water, coming toward her. A huge shadow, at least six times longer and three times as wide as her boat. It moved as swiftly as her wind-driven craft, though it was fully submerged.

  In that instant, Taruka knew Harooka’s warning had been entirely honest. But she had no time to regret her ill-founded suspicion. The shadow moved under her boat. Taruka’s hands were already in motion, reaching across to untie the spears. She grabbed the scabbard and ripped it open, sending buttons flying. Her father’s spear was halfway out when the boat shuddered violently and came to a full stop, as if it had hit a rock. Taruka was hurled forward, landing with a terrible jolt on the bottom boards before the mast.

  The boat lurched again and lifted up, seawater pouring from its sides. At first it was almost level; then the stern began to sink and the bow to rise. Taruka gripped the mast with her left hand and pulled herself up, somehow managing to get the spear free and ready in her right hand. Unlike most tuskarr weapons, the spearhead was not made of sharpened bone, but black volcanic glass.

  The boat lifted higher and higher, up into the air. Timbers groaned and screeched as the boat started to slide stern-first toward the sea behind. Taruka looked over the side. The giant sea creature had risen up underneath, and now the boat was sliding down its scaly hide. Whatever the creature was, it wasn’t a whale. Not with those strangely shimmering blue-black scales instead of blubber.

  The beast lifted its head higher, and the boat began to slide faster backward. Taruka lifted the spear high, leaned over the side, and drove it into the strange scales below with all her might.

  The spear rebounded with a screech as if she’d struck at stone, the shock reverberating through her wrists and elbows. The scales were armor. Even her father’s fabled spear could not penetrate it.

  The boat’s stern hit the sea, and it lurched sideways. Taruka jumped clear and slid downward too, her feet scrabbling for purchase. Somehow her free hand found a gap between two scales, and she forced her fingers in and hung there, but before she could think of what to do the great beast raised its tail, which was long, tapered, and finned like an eel’s. She lost her grip, plunged forward, and went slipping down the creature’s back the other way, toward its head.

  Heavy rain drenched her, or what seemed like rain till she saw it came from the huge plume of spray jetting from the creature’s blowhole. This was in the center of its head like a whale’s spout, but unlike a whale’s it stuck out like a carbuncle, a volcano-shaped excrescence of the same shimmering blue-black armored scales. Its head was framed by fins that fanned out, barbs protruding from the ends.

  The creature disappeared beneath the surface, its dive already in motion, the massive body continuing for a little while longer, not knowing it was dead.

  The creature’s eyes were higher on the head than a whale’s would be too, and facing forward. Almost like a stargazer, a manta the tuskarr occasionally caught on a deep line. But the eyes were not like any fish or whale Taruka had ever seen. They more closely resembled a seagull’s eyes, made huge, red-rimmed and yellow, but even then there was a difference, because the pupils were vertical bars of hard darkness, not round and soft at all.

  When she saw the eyes, Taruka stopped trying to arrest her slide. She rolled over on her stomach, locked the spear under her elbow, and pushed with her feet, changing direction so she slid straight toward the eye she was already most in line with. The left eye.

  The blowhole plume subsided, and the strange rain ceased. Taruka screamed in frustration as the creature raised its head again and her forward motion slowed. She pushed frantically with her feet and clawed at the scales ahead with her free hand, knowing it was useless. Without a long slide she would never—

  Suddenly the beast began to dive, its head down and tail up. Taruka was flung forward again. As the sea rushed up to swallow her, for reasons she couldn’t place, her father’s wisdom echoed in her mind.

  “It is not hook, net, or spear that makes a true fisher. It is the patience to use them well.”

  She waited until the second before she hit the waves and lost all momentum. Then, with her fast-sliding weight behind it, her father’s spear struck true, piercing the creature’s eye, and sank in all the way to where she gripped the haft.

  Blood erupted from the wound like a geyser even as a wave swept Taruka away. She lost her hold on the spear, which was anchored in the monster, sunk deep into its brain. The creature disappeared beneath the surface, its dive already in motion, the massive body continuing for a little while longer, not knowing it was dead.

  Taruka went under too, sucked down in the backwash, but she was a tuskarr. Water so cold it would kill most of the other denizens of Azeroth in minutes was survivable for her. The kalu’ak did not drown easily. She kicked toward the surface, at the same time struggling out of her oilskin coat.

  She emerged on the crest of a wave, spitting seawater and gulping air, before drawing up her legs to remove her boots. Then she trod water for a while and looked around.

  Sturdy as her tuskarr body was, Taruka knew she would almost certainly die of exhaustion, exposure, or both. But there might be a chance she could delay her inevitable end. If she could see the shore, she might be able to swim to it. Or maybe the oars from her boat had floated free. She could rest on them and maybe—

  Her boat. Taruka blinked and wiped her eyebrows, which were sodden and dripping saltwater into her eyes. She had to wait till she rose up on the crest of the next wave to confirm what she thought she’d seen, but there it was.

  Her boat hadn’t sunk. It had capsized. The hull was riding low with the keel barely an arm span above the sea, with the mast snapped off and floating next to it, but her boat was still afloat.

  She swam to the craft and climbed, shivering, onto the upturned hull. It felt colder in the wind, but she knew it was better to be out of the water. The sun was shining, which would help enormously, and the wind had lessened.

  Taruka took stock of the situation. She had her inner furs on, which would grow warmer as they dried. Unless the swell increased and waves broke over the hull, or the boat sank lower, the furs would dry over the next few hours. She had her filleting knife and a few strips of cured fish. The mast floating nearby had the furled mainsail attached—the cloth might be useful.

  But with all that, she still could not right the boat by herself. All she could do was float here and hope to be rescued. Or if the boat somehow drifted close enough, she could swim to the barren shore, which would not be much better.

  Something moved in the corner of her eye, a shadow under the surface. Taruka flinched, unable to help herself. Was the creature only blinded and now coming back for its revenge? She clutched her knife, knowing it would be useless, and steeled herself for what was to come.

  The shadow rose, and then, with an anticlimactic sound like a big stone thrown into a pool, the creature bobbed to the surface. Taruka stared at it, waiting for the tail to suddenly whip up, the elongated, toothy jaws she had refused to look at before to yawn wide, the beast turning to engulf her, boat and all.

  But at the same time, she knew a floating dead fish when she saw one. It simply took several seconds for this to break through the panic in her mind that told her she really was going to die this time.

  A minute or two later, she was sure the creature was dead. She took a deep if somewhat shaky breath and considered the floating creature. It rode high in the water, much higher than any normal dead fish would float. It must have a lot of air inside it, she thought. This led to other thoughts.

  Perhaps there was a chance …

  Taruka slid over the side and dived under her boat, returning a minute or two later with one of the oars, which had luckily not floated free. Sitting astride the keel, she began to paddle the boat toward the massive corpse. Reaching it, she tied her boat off at the tail a
nd climbed onto the monster. Now that it was floating level, it was easy to walk all the way up to the blowhole and take a look inside. From there she edged forward and looked down at the long, protruding upper jaw. It was rather like a ship’s bowsprit, Taruka thought.

  She went back to her boat, cut the mast free from various tangled lines, and dragged it up onto the monster’s back. The mast that had survived two ill-fated voyages was now to be put in service again, in a new craft.

  Taruka stepped the mast in the blowhole. It didn’t fit all that well, but she chocked it with bits of splintered timber. The forestay she fastened to the tip of the outthrust jaw. This took a little swimming, but she somehow felt the cold less now that she had a plan and could leave her furs to stay dry up high by the blowhole. More swimming was required to wind the backstay around the eel-like tail. The butt of her father’s spear, lodged too deeply for her to pull out, made an admirable peg for one of the shrouds, and she found that loose scales could be pried up to serve as cleats for the others.

  It was by no means a perfect rigging, but when Taruka hoisted the mainsail, her new vessel moved with the wind behind it, albeit slowly. She found it could be very roughly steered by moving her old upturned boat from one side of the tail to the other and by careful trimming of the sail.

  Better still, she salvaged her net from the old boat, and with scavengers trailing the dead beast and predators targeting the scavengers, she caught many fish. Enough to feed her, and she drank their blood so that the three-day voyage northward did not end with her starved and thirsty and beaten down.

  It ended in triumph, even if she did have to be towed the last few hundred yards into Kamagua Harbor, the wind having shifted enough to make the matter tedious. Everyone wanted to help, so her strange vessel that was also her catch was towed by boats from many different clans and by the kayaks of the children. Scores of kites were flown from the shore overhead, to indicate to those far away that something great and wonderful was taking place.