“Understood,” said Tyrande.
Baine turned and looked back at Garrosh with narrowed eyes, then at Tyrande. “I request a ten-minute respite to confer with the Accused and my time advisor before the next witness, Fa’shua.”
“So granted,” said Taran Zhu, and struck the gong.
Kairoz approached Baine with a quizzical look. Still standing at her table, Tyrande gave the dragon a nod of acknowledgment. He grasped the chair she had vacated, giving her a wink and a smile.
“You’ll have this back in no time,” he promised the astonished high priestess, then pulled the chair alongside the chained Garrosh.
Baine said irritably but quietly, “Tyrande won’t forget that.”
“I don’t intend her to,” said Kairoz, keeping his voice equally soft. “By my reckoning, and I am always right about such things, we now have only seven minutes and eighteen seconds. Please speak, Chu’shao.”
The tauren needed no further urging. He turned his attention full upon Garrosh, his nostrils flaring. “What in the name of the Earth Mother are you doing, Garrosh?”
“Me?” Garrosh chuckled. “Why, nothing at all.”
“That is precisely what I mean. You are showing no remorse, no reactions—not even vague interest in these proceedings!”
Garrosh shrugged, and his chains jingled with an incongruously bright sound. “That is because I have no interest in the proceedings . . . Chu’shao.”
Baine swore softly. “Do you truly desire execution, then?”
“Execution? No. Death? If I were to die in glorious battle against the likes of this priestess charged with damning me . . . yes. I would most assuredly wish that.”
“Your odds of being released and permitted to fight again decrease with each passing moment that you sit stoically in this chair doing nothing to help your cause!” Baine warned.
“I am no youngling to be told bedtime tales, Bloodhoof,” Garrosh said. “I will never be permitted another battle, were I as long lived as this bronze wyrm.”
“Life is full of surprises,” Kairoz said unexpectedly. “But I will say, you certainly won’t see battle if your head is on a pike like a skewered peanut chicken, being happily passed around from the gates of Stormwind to Orgrimmar and back again.”
With the minutes ticking away, Baine sat for a moment, wrestling with his conscience. If Garrosh himself did not care what happened to him, why should he? Surely honor is being satisfied, Baine thought. No one can say that I did not try to defend him well. And what if he is reprieved? What then?
“Chu’shao Bloodhoof,” said Kairoz in a warning voice. Baine lifted a hand to silence the dragon.
He knew he was defending well—better, likely, than the orc deserved. But could he meet his father in the afterlife and say, I have come home, Father, and I have done the best I could?
He knew the answer. Baine took a deep, resigned breath, and turned again to Garrosh. “Give me something to counter her with, Garrosh. I’ve had to create my entire case without any help from you.”
“And you can see how well that’s going,” said Kairoz.
Baine gave Kairoz a withering glance. “Your confidence,” he said, “is inspiring.” He turned back to Garrosh. “If you will not talk to me, help me to defend you . . . Is there anyone you would speak to? Some warrior, some shaman who holds your respect?”
A strange smile curved around Garrosh’s tusks. “Well, Chu’shao . . . there is . . . one,” he said.
Still reeling from Garrosh’s completely unexpected request of a confidant, Baine settled in beside the orc a few moments later. Garrosh’s earlier smile had faded, and he once again wore the inscrutable mask he had donned for the proceedings thus far. Tyrande was running rampant over anything and everything Baine put forward. There was no one left alive that Baine could use to share the blame for what Garrosh had done, and there were few who would or even could speak well of him.
Tyrande’s next witness was making his vow to uphold the honor of the court. Baine mused darkly that Kairoz’s comments were on target. She had called another orc—one whom many present knew and respected. One whom Baine was not looking forward to questioning.
Varok Saurfang.
He sat in the chair, his mere presence charismatic and calm. Age spotted his green face, and time and sorrow both had etched deep wrinkles in his forehead and around yellowed tusks. Long white braids draped his still-massive shoulders, and his eyes were alert. Baine knew where this would be going, and his ears were pricked forward, hoping to find something, anything, he could use that could remotely help Garrosh.
“Please state your name,” said Tyrande kindly.
“I am Varok Saurfang,” he said in a deep voice. “Brother to Broxigar, father to Dranosh. I serve the Horde.”
“Broxigar being one of the great heroes not just of the Horde, but of Azeroth, correct?”
Saurfang’s eyes narrowed, as if he was suspecting a trick. “I and many others deem him so, yes,” he replied.
“You yourself are regarded highly in the eyes of your people, and by the Alliance as well,” Tyrande continued. Baine could hear genuine respect in the night elf’s voice. “Many here know of the great tragedy that befell your son.”
Varok’s face grew carefully impassive. “Others suffered as well because of the Lich King’s darkness. I have never asked for special treatment.” The words were true—the brave Dranosh Saurfang had been slain at what had become known as the Battle of Angrathar the Wrath Gate, only to be drafted to rise again as an undead to challenge his father and other heroes of the Horde. But such horrors were tragically not uncommon. Many, like Varok, had been forced to oppose someone they loved whom they had already mourned once. The dark legacy of the Lich King lived on in the wounded hearts of the survivors, and in the Knights of the Ebon Blade, now an uneasy part of both Horde and Alliance society.
“I would like others to fully understand just what you endured, may it please the court.”
Baine abruptly realized with a sickening jolt precisely which scene Tyrande was planning on displaying.
No. It didn’t matter if Tyrande was being calculating or if she was acting from misguided compassion. He could not let her show—
Baine leaped to his hooves. “With respect, I protest!” he cried. “Varok Saurfang has suffered enough, Fa’shua, and what Chu’shao Whisperwind is suggesting is nothing but salt in the wound. I will not see him forced to endure the death of his son yet again!”
“What you will and will not see in this court is not your decision, Chu’shao,” warned Taran Zhu. “But I agree with you. The court recognizes that Varok Saurfang is a respected war hero and has undergone great loss, Chu’shao Whisperwind, but we do not see how that has a bearing on his interactions with Garrosh. The Lich King is not the one on trial here.”
Color rose in Tyrande’s cheeks. “I withdraw my request and offer apologies to the witness if it disturbed him.”
Varok’s jaw tightened, but he nodded curtly. The high priestess continued. “Would you agree that you are well respected, Varok Saurfang? That few, if any, would question your devotion to the Horde?”
“It is not for me to decide how I am viewed in the eyes of others,” Saurfang replied. “For myself, I love the Horde with my whole being.”
“Enough to die for it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Enough to kill for it?”
“Certainly. I am a warrior.”
“Would you say that you and others used the Horde as a sort of . . . license to butcher?”
“With respect, I protest!” Baine shouted. “The Accuser’s apparently obsessive focus on past events that have nothing to do with the Accused is verging on hate-mongering!”