The king, too, was holding his own as he shouted back, “We’re all getting out! Medivh will cover our retreat!”
Lothar hadn’t paused in his attacks. The men were gravitating toward him now, as if he were a living banner and they were drawing strength from his seemingly limitless supply.
Medivh.
The Guardian’s name roused Garona from her rapt fascination with Lothar’s astounding ferocity. As they had approached the meeting site, Medivh had told them he could protect them better if he could see them all. He had taken his horse up, to watch them from above. Now, Garona tore her gaze from Lothar to gaze upward, trying to spot Medivh. Where was he? Why was he not acting?
She did not see him. But she did see someone else.
Blackhand, mounted atop a wolf, peering down at the ambush.
And beside Gul’dan’s warchief stood Orgrim Doomhammer.
14
Anger, white-hot and pure, fueled Garona. Against all reason, she started to move toward the cliffside. Gaze locked on Orgrim, she didn’t see the orc who was charging at her from the side until he started screaming. She whirled, snarling, to behold the orc writhing in agony. Small pieces of liquid orange fire were bombarding him. Garona hissed as she smelled his cooking flesh. He died quickly, but in obvious torment.
Over his fallen body stood Khadgar. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She had been saved by a boy. A boy who could wield magic like a shaman or a warlock, and who could summon and direct lava—but a boy nonetheless. She nodded her thanks, then turned, ready to fight her own battle with the Stormwind pike. A green-skinned orc charged her, woefully underestimating her as she shrieked and jabbed him square in the throat. As Garona tugged the blade free, she realized she was looking directly at the king. He was fighting desperately, utterly unaware of the orc rushing up from behind him, the huge, curved blade of his war axe lifted to deal a death blow.
Garona was not about to let this human, who had trusted her, whose mate had even armed her with her own blade, fall to a treacherous orc. With the full force of her body and her speed, Garona opened her mouth in a battle cry and raced toward the would-be killer. Llane’s eyes flew open wide as she charged, seemingly directly at him, and he dived to the side. Garona impaled the huge green orc as if he were a haunch of meat.
It should have killed him, but seemed only to anger him. His body a green almost as bright as that of her former master, the orc snarled an insult at her. She did not want to wait for him to die. Howling, she drew Taria’s knife and slashed his throat. Green blood flew, arcing from the severed artery and spattering both her and a startled Llane. She yanked the pike free and the orc fell heavily to the dirt, spun round, his attention diverted from the king.
Garona’s eyes met the king’s over the body. Panting, Llane nodded; he knew she had saved his life today.
* * *
“Where’s the bloody Guardian?” Lothar muttered. He was hip-deep in enemies, dodging and swinging and ducking. His sword found an open spot as an orc raised its axe and he lunged. Distantly, he realized that orc anatomy was similar enough to human for his purpose as the creature toppled almost at once.
He risked a quick glance to see if he could find Medivh and instead saw his son. Callan was holding his own, ripping a spear out of one orc’s huge paws while ducking in time to avoid the swipe of another wearing an enormous warclaw.
Beyond the boy was a cluster of soldiers. They looked pathetically small as they battled the giant monsters. Lothar glanced back at Llane, anguished. Protect the king—or his soldiers, who were outnumbered and ruthlessly being beaten down?
“I’ll get them!”
The voice was youthful, but determined. It was Callan’s. Lothar was first surprised, then terribly proud. His son had seen, and had known immediately his father’s dilemma. The boy had killed the orc he was fighting, and now moved determinedly to aid his companions.
Dad… I’m a soldier.
Lothar spared a moment as his son raced toward his brothers in arms, shouting out, “Shield formation!” The soldiers drew together and raised their shields in front of, and over, themselves. Why was—
And then Lothar understood. A monster of an orc on one of those overgrown wolves charged them, leaping at, then, incredibly, climbing up the layers of Stormwind shields. Swords, spears, and pikes jutted between the shields, and the wolf howled piteously, scrambling as its red blood stained the shields. It was dead a moment later, but the soldiers collapsed under the weight of wolf and rider.
It happened in the span of a few seconds, but the brief glimpse was sufficient for Lothar to recognize the orc. The last time Lothar had seen him, the beast had been ordering a retreat, his right hand burned, bloodied, and minus several fingers courtesy of Magni’s boomstick. But now, he had a new and more horrifying limb—a claw, enormous, monstrous and shiny, with five blades to replace his five fingers.
Lothar looked up anxiously at the plateau. “Medivh!” he bellowed. He turned back to the soldiers who had escaped the collapse of the shield barrier, fighting desperately.
And into the merciless eyes of the claw-handed orc.
He now understood what was so terrifying about these creatures. They were huge, and some of them had green skin. Some wore skulls around their necks, and their weapons were almost the size of the humans they slew with them. They had ugly, jutting jaws and tusks in their mouths. But what made them so very horrifying was not any of these things. It was the fact that they were not, indeed, mere “creatures”. For in those tiny, dark eyes, Anduin Lothar saw not just bloodlust and hatred—but a fierce intelligence.
And at this moment, in those eyes, Lothar saw recognition.
The orc began to stride purposefully toward him, hacking at any who would dare impede his descent upon the human who had deprived him of a hand.
All right then, you bastard, Lothar thought. Come on, and I’ll lop off the other—
Light exploded in front of him, accompanied almost simultaneously with a deafening peal of thunder. He heard Llane shout, “That’s the Guardian’s work! Quick! Retreat to the plateau!”
Another blinding flash and ear-splitting roll of thunder, and another, and another. They came hard on one another’s heels now, hundreds of sizzling, bright shafts of lightning that struck the earth and lingered side by side to form a wall that spread out to separate humans from their attackers; a fence of deadly energy that stretched across the valley.
And the monstrous orc with the artificial hand was on the wrong side of it. Lothar couldn’t help laughing, mostly in relief, as the orc threw back his head and raged impotently.
“Let’s go!” cried Llane, spurring his horse into action and riding among his men, herding them toward the plateau and an open area. Lothar used the moment to catch his breath, and smiled with relief as he gazed upward. “Medivh,” he whispered. Until this moment, he hadn’t realized how worried he had been that his old friend might not be—
Where was Callan?
No…
He turned. A small handful of soldiers were still fighting, still trying to retreat. And they, like the tattooed orc, were on the other side of Medivh’s wall.
“Down!” The word was half demand, half sob. Lothar looked up at the plateau, trying to find his old friend. “Take it down! Medivh! Medivh, please!”
His world narrowed, and he sprinted toward his boy only to be brought up short by the spitting, captured bolts of lightning. Furious, he tried to reach through the spaces between them, to see if there was any place he could cross. His armor sizzled as he touched it, shocking him and knocking him back, but he again rushed forward, trying to find a space, a crack in the lightning-spear wall, a place where a slender sapling of a young man, a boy with his mother’s eyes, could slip through—
It was futile. There was only the erratic, flashing wall, the straight backs of Callan and the handful of other soldiers who had been trapped, alone with the maddened green-skinned monsters who now advanced upon them.
Desperately, Lothar gritted his teeth and pushed his arm through. The lightning did not like such a violation of its power and punished him for his arrogance, turning the armor red where it touched. Lothar persevered, straining until his hand closed on his child’s shoulder. Callan turned. Their faces were only a few inches apart, but it might as well have been a thousand leagues. “Callan!” he cried, “Hold on, son!”
“Dad…!” The lightning cracked and Lothar was forced to stumble back. Callan looked at his father with that strange, old, knowing expression he had worn in the infirmary. He smiled sadly, almost sweetly. He knew. Cally had known, too, when the shadow of death had stretched across her. Even as her lungs had filled for the last time, she had used the precious breath to form words of comfort for her devastated mate. Enraged, Lothar scrabbled furiously at the soil, reaching his arm through again. He’s right here—he’s so close, I can reach him, I—
Lothar met his gaze, held it, as his wife’s eyes smiled back at him from a boy’s—a man’s—face.
“For Azeroth!” And Callan turned and charged into the approaching sea of brown and green skin.
Lothar went mad.
He flung himself at the lightning barrier, trying to break through, perhaps through sheer force of will. This time, he gritted his teeth against the jolts of energy and kept pushing. His armor sizzled, glowing orange where the white lightning shafts touched it, and he heard it snap.
He endured it as long as he could, but at last he stumbled away, nerves afire with pain, watching the huge monsters with their scraps of armor and obscenely sized weapons close in around the handful of soldiers, blotting out their bright armor.
Lothar sobbed, a harsh, racking cry that tore at his throat and his heart. His head whipped around wildly, searching for Medivh, anyone, anything, for aid, unable to help his boy, unable to abandon him.
His eyes fell on Reliant’s body—and the shield with the horned skull that had taken the horse’s life. Lothar raced toward it and heaved it up, arms quivering beneath the weight. He kept his feet by sheer effort of will and charged the sizzling wall once again, trying to push through using the shield as a battering ram. Through one of the skull’s empty eye sockets as large as his whole head, he could see Callan fighting with skill and strength Lothar had not realized his son possessed. He was holding his own.
Then the throng of brown and green bodies stepped back. Some of them stared down at the center of their circle, others had their gazes turned elsewhere. The lightning wall hissed and spat. Another blast sent Lothar hurling backward. He landed hard, his body spasming. Two of his soldiers lifted him to his feet.
Callan was engaged in combat with one of the green orcs, a massive beast with a topknot and a jaw tattooed entirely black. The boy lunged forward with his sword, but the orc trapped the blade with his own—a primitive, jagged thing that looked like an animal’s jawbone. He yanked the weapon from Callan’s hands.
Callan grunted, but stayed on his feet. The orc’s lip curled. He lifted Callan’s blade, intending to shame his enemy by felling him with the hilt of his own weapon, but the leader shouted a protest. The orc lowered the sword and stepped back, ceding his prey. A black hand shot out, spun Callan around, and then wrapped about the boy’s throat.
“Callan!” cried Lothar. “Look at me, boy.”
The orc turned, staring at Lothar, his grip on Callan never slacking. Slowly, carefully, Callan moved his head to look at his father. There was fear in those eyes, as there would be in in any sane creature’s. Lothar could not bear to see it, not in Cally’s eyes. He, too, was afraid, horribly afraid, more frightened of what was unfolding with a dreadful inevitability than of his own death.
And so, for Callan and not for himself, Anduin Lothar did not hurl himself against the lightning again. He did not scream in fury. He stood, quietly, even peacefully, Callan’s hazel eyes locked with his own. Lothar kept that gaze, even when the orc, finally understanding the significance of the prize he clutched, grinned with deep satisfaction, the expression stretching his hideous, misshapen face around the jutting tusks.
He turned back to Callan, lifted his arm and the bloodstained claw that was grafted onto it, and brought it down.
It felt as though the weapon had plunged into his own body, carving out his heart as it sliced though Callan’s armor and flesh. The orc lifted the body of Callan Lothar as if it were a piece of speared meat. He hurled Lothar’s boy toward him, to crash and sizzle into the blue-white spears of lightning, then fall, limp, to the uncaring stone.
Slowly, Lothar raised his eyes. Hatred, cold and cleansing, replaced his anguish, for this moment at least. And as he gazed at the smug, grinning orc who had eviscerated the last thing Lothar loved, Lothar made them both a promise.
I will kill you. However long it may take, whatever it will cost me… I will kill you, for what you have done here today.
* * *
“He’s here!”
At Garona’s shout, Khadgar closed his eyes briefly in relief. He hastened over to where she knelt beside what at first looked like a discarded pile of clothing. As he drew closer, he sucked in a breath at the sight of the Guardian.
The only motion was the faint rise and fall of Medivh’s chest. Otherwise, he was terribly still. Cheekbones jutted out in a hollow, pale face dotted with sweat.
“What’s wrong with him?” Garona asked. Khadgar had no decisive answer, only suspicions he was not willing to share. Not yet. “We need to get him to Karazhan,” he said.
Garona nodded. “I’ll get horses.”
“You won’t make it in time by road.” Llane’s voice was clear and strong. “You’ll take one of my birds.”
The king lifted his hand in a signal to one of his men, who nodded and unfurled a long, leather tube. He raised the tube and began to spin it around his head. The device caught the air and produced a sharp whistling sound. The response was swift: A dot appeared in the sky, dropping down toward them. It was one of the royal gryphons, its white feathers and brown lion’s body a welcome sight. Its powerful wings created a wind that blew back Khadgar’s hair as it landed, shook itself, and looked at the gryphon master expectantly.
A few days ago, Khadgar had never even beheld the creatures. Now, he had ridden them more than once, and this time he was the more experienced of the two who now climbed into the gryphon’s saddle. Other events that had occurred had more importance and urgency, but he cherished this little pleasure in the midst of all the horror.
Settled astride the beast, Khadgar and Garona reached to accept Medivh’s frighteningly limp body. Without even thinking, Khadgar let Garona hold the Guardian, knowing her arms were stronger than his. As her green arms wrapped around the Guardian, the young mage suddenly realized what a great gesture of trust this was. She knew it, too, and nodded, the barest trace of a smile curving around her tusks.
Llane caressed the head of the great beast, looked it in the eyes, and commanded it: “Karazhan! Go!”
* * *
Moroes was waiting for them as they rushed down the stairs from the landing to the main chamber, Medivh slack in Garona’s muscular arms. Khadgar saw that the servant didn’t seem in the least bit surprised, although his already lined face was further furrowed in worry.
“Place him in the font,” Moroes instructed.
“Moroes,” Khadgar demanded. “What’s wrong with the Guardian?”
As Khadgar himself had done when Garona had posed that question, Moroes did not answer, just shook his white head. “I told him not to leave Karazhan,” he said, more to himself than to them.
Together, Moroes and Garona placed Medivh in the magical font, arranging him carefully, leaving only his head and chest floating above the white wisps of living magic. Khadghar had wrapped his cloak around Medivh to help protect the Guardian from the cold air during the flight. The cloth had bunched up beneath the Guardian’s head when they had placed him in the font. Gently, Khadgar lifted Medivh’s head to remove th
e cloak.
Now, at last, Medivh showed some signs of life, if vague and confused. His eyelids flickered, then opened. The young mage’s heart spasmed as he saw the faintest flicker of green light in Medivh’s eyes.
His gut clenched, and he swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “I have to go,” he blurted. “We need the help of the Kirin Tor… Now!”
“Go,” Garona urged him.
As he pelted up the stairs, Khadgar heard Moroes tell Garona, “There are medicines I must prepare. Sit with him.”
Khadgar did not want to leave the Guardian, but there was no choice. His mouth was set in a grim line as he raced for the loft, the gryphon, and, Light willing, some help for this world, before it was too late.
15
Draka was a warrior. Until now, her place had always been fighting at the side of the orc who was her husband, chieftain, and best friend. The birth of their yet-unnamed baby here, in this new fertile but hostile world, had changed all that. The infant was not just her child, or the son of the chieftain—he was the clan’s child, the only one born to the Frostwolves in far too long, and despite his unsettling coloring, he was loved by all of them. In addition, there were few orcs here in Azeroth who were not needed, almost daily, to fight.
She had shared her husband’s sentiments regarding Gul’dan, his evil magic, and the wrongness of this battle against the humans. But every moment that they were separated was a trial. It was one thing to go into battle together, knowing death was a possibility. It was another to be left behind to wait, not knowing anything at all.
As if sensing her distress, the baby started to fuss in his basket, opening those beautiful, peculiar blue eyes and reaching out his tiny fists to her. Gently, Draka took one of the little hands in hers and kissed it. “This hand will hurl your father’s spear, Thunderstrike,” she told him. “Or maybe you would prefer the great axe Sever, hmm?”
The baby gurgled, seemingly happy with whichever weapon he would wield some day in the future, and the trepidation in her heart eased somewhat. “My precious little warrior,” she murmured, “you are a true orc, no matter your skin color. We will teach you that.”
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