Night had fallen while we spoke, a soft night befitting this beautiful land. We left the tent and gazed up at stars too numerous too count, a sweet wind caressing our faces. I turned to Drek’Thar, to ask for his wisdom. To my astonishment I saw tears on his face, glinting in the moon’s light.
“This is how we used to be, my chieftain,” he said in a broken voice. He lifted his arms and tilted his head back, calling the wind to embrace him and dry the tears on his strong green face. “Close to the earth. Close to the spirits. Strong in the hunt, gentle with the younglings, knowing our place in the world to be right and just. Understanding the balance of taking and giving. The only magic the tauren practice is the good, clean magic of the earth, and the land reflects that, the way Draenor once reflected our connection.”
I thought of the tauren’s request for aid infighting their enemy, the vile, filthy centaur.
“Yes … I feel for them. It will be good to be able to help them,” I said.
Drek’Thar laughed, turning his blind eyes to me and seeing me more clearly than anyone with sight could.
“Oh, my young Thrall,” he said, chuckling still, “you do not yet understand. They will help us.”
Durotan ran as fast as his powerful young legs could carry him. His breath came fast, and sweat dappled his reddish-brown skin, but he forced himself to keep going. It was summer, and his large, flat feet were bare. The grass was soft beneath him as he ran, and occasionally he would step on the bright purple blossom of a dassanflower. The scent from the bruised plant traditionally cultivated for healing wafted up like a blessing, inspiring him to run even farther, even faster.
Now he was on the fringe of the Terokkar forest, pushing forward into its cool, gray-green depths. He had to watch out for the twining roots of the elegant trees lest he trip over them, and his pace perforce slowed. Soft lights glowed in the green heart of this forest, and the calm it exuded was at sharp odds with Durotan’s need for triumph. He increased his pace, leaping over fallen tree trunks covered with moss, ducking under low-slung branches with the grace of a talbuk. His black hair, long and thick and spilling all the way to the middle of his back, flew behind him. His lungs burned and his legs cried out for him to cease, but he ground his teeth and ignored the pleas from his body. He was a Frostwolf, the heir to clan chieftaincy, and no Blackrock would possibly—
Durotan heard a fair approximation of a war cry behind him and his heart sank. Orgrim’s voice, like Durotan’s, was still sinking toward the deep bellow that marked an adult male, but even Durotan had to admit it was already impressive. He willed his legs to pump even harder, but they felt as heavy and unmoving as if they had been carved of stone. He watched in dismay out of the corner of his eye as Orgrim came into his field of vision and then, with a final spurt of energy, raced past him.
The Blackrock orc extended his arm and lunged, managing to hit the tree trunk in the clearing that they had decided represented the goal of the race right before Durotan did. Orgrim kept going for several more strides, as if his powerful legs, once put into motion, were reluctant to stop. Durotan’s legs had no such problems, and the heir to the Frostwolf clan fell forward, barely catching himself. He lay facedown in the cool, sweet-smelling mossy earth, gasping for air, knowing he should sit up, knowing he should challenge Orgrim again, but too exhausted to do anything other than lie on the forest floor and recover.
Beside him, he heard Orgrim doing likewise, and then the other orc youth rolled over on his back and began to laugh. Durotan joined in. The birds and small animals that inhabited the Terokkar forest were silent as two orcs uttered sounds of mirth that, Durotan thought as his lips curled past his still-forming tusks, probably sounded more than a little like the fierce war cries that presaged a hunt.
“Ha,” grunted Orgrim, sitting up and punching Durotan in a playful manner. “It is little effort to beat a stripling like you. Durotan.”
“You have so much muscle your brain is starved,” Durotan retorted. “Skill is as important as power. But the Blackrock clan wouldn’t know about such things.”
There was no malice in their banter. Their clans had been troubled at first by the friendship between the two youths, but Durotan’s stubborn argument—that just because something had never been done before did not mean it could not be done—amused and impressed the leaders of both clans. It helped that both the Frostwolves and the Blackrocks were both traditionally even-tempered orc clans. Had Durotan proposed such a friendship with a Warsong clan member or a Bonechewer, for example, known for their intense clan pride and distrust of others, the little flame of friendship would have died quickly. So the elders watched, and waited for the novelty to fade and for each youth to return to his rightful place and keep the familiar order that had been established for … as long as anyone could recall.
They were disappointed.
The frost of late winter had given way to spring and now the full blowsy warmth of summer, and the friendship continued. Durotan knew that they were watched, but as long as no one interfered, he did not object.
Durotan closed his eyes and let his fingers spread over the moss. The shaman said that all things had a life, a power, a spirit. They were deeply involved with the spirits of the elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and the Spirit of the Wilds—and claimed they could sense the life force in earth and even seemingly dead stone. All Durotan could feel was the cool, slightly moist sensation of moss and soil beneath his palms.
The earth shuddered. His eyes snapped open.
He bolted upright, his hand automatically going for the spiked club that he constantly carried. Orgrim preferred a heavy metal and wood hammer, the traditional weapon of the Blackrocks and a simplified version of the legendary hammer that would one day come to him. The two boys exchanged glances. They did not need to speak to communicate. Was the thing that made the earth shake so an enormous clefthoof, with its shaggy pelt that made magnificent blankets and rich red flesh that could feed almost the whole clan, or was it something more dangerous?
What did live in the Terokkar forest, anyway? They had been here only once before ….
They got to their feet in unison, their small dark eyes peering into the now ominous-seeming dark corners of the close-growing trees, searching for whatever had made the noise.
Boom. The earth shuddered again. Durotan’s heart started to beat faster. If it was a small clefthoof, maybe they could take it down together and share the spoils with both clans. He glanced over at Orgrim and saw the other’s eyes gleam with excitement.
Boom.
Boom.
Crash.
Both youths gasped and then retreated as the noise came closer. A tree only a few yards away from them seemed to splinter before their eyes. The thing that had made the noise and so casually dispatched an ancient tree suddenly came into view.
It was enormous, it carried a club as big as they were, and it was most definitely not a clefthoof.
And it had seen them.
It opened its mouth and bellowed something that was vaguely intelligible, but Durotan wasn’t about to waste time figuring out what it had said.