Christie Golden: Rise of the Horde

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.

Their thoughts as one, the two boys turned and fled.

Now Durotan wished desperately that they had not decided to challenge one another to a race earlier, for his legs had not hilly recovered. Yet still they moved when he asked it of them, the need for survival lending him energy.

How had they wandered so far into ogre territory? And where were the gronn? Durotan imagined one of the ogre’s masters forcing its way through the trees as the ogre had—towering over ordinary ogres as ogres towered over the orcs, even more hideous than an ogre, more of the earth than of flesh and yet so terribly wrong, its one eye bloodshot and staring as it pointed at Durotan and Orgrim and directed the ogre toward it.

He and Orgrim were not yet of the season where they would be initiated into adulthood and permitted to go with the warriors of the clans to hunt the ogres and, on rare occasions, the gronn themselves. They had gone on hunts that their clans had perceived as less dangerous, for talbuk and other easy prey, but Durotan had always yearned for the day when he would be allowed to tackle these fearsome creatures, winning honor for himself and his clan.

Now, he wasn’t so sure. The earth continued to tremble, and the shouts of the ogre were coming more clearly now.

“Crush little orcs! Me smash!” The roar that followed this almost made his ears bleed.

The thing was gaining on them. Despite his brain’s panicked orders to his body to run faster, faster curse you, he could not put any distance between him and the monstrous being that loomed so close that its vast shadow almost blotted out what little light filtered through the tree branches.

The trees thinned and the light grew brighter. They were close to the edge of the forest now. Durotan kept running and burst into the open space of the meadow, his feet falling again on soft grass, Orgrim was ahead of him, but not by much. Despair washed through Durotan, followed hard by a black wave of fury.

They were not yet adults! They had not gone on their first real hunt, they had not danced by the fire with the females, they had not bathed their faces in the steaming blood of their first solo kills. There was so much they had not done. To die a glorious death in battle was one thing, but They were so overpowered by the hideous creature as to make their deaths humorous rather than honorable.

Knowing it could cost him precious seconds, but unable to resist the impulse, Durotan turned his head to scream a curse at the ogre before it smashed him as flat as a graincake with its club.

What he saw made his jaw drop.

Their rescuers did not utter a sound. They moved in silence, a quiet tide of blue and white and silver that seemingly sprang out of the very air. Durotan heard the familiar whine of arrows shrieking through the air and a heartbeat later the ogre’s cries were tinged not with rage but with pain. Dozens of arrows, tiny things on that massive pale body, sprouted from it, and it halted its deadly progress. It yelled and tried to brush the irritations from its skin.

A clear voice rang out. Even though he did not understand the language, Durotan recognized words of power when he heard them, and his skin prickled. Suddenly the sky was filled with lightning. But this was unlike any lightning Durotan had seen invoked by a shaman. Blue and white and silver energy crackled around the ogre, swirling about it and closing in on it like a net. The monster bellowed again and fell. The earth shook.

Now the draenei, their bodies covered in some sort of metallic plating that reflected the cool hues of the magical energies in a display that dazzled Durotan’s eyes, dismounted and descended upon the fallen ogre. Blades flashed, more words of power and command were uttered, and Durotan was forced to shut his eyes or be driven mad by the display.

At last silence fell. Durotan opened his eyes again to see that the ogre was dead. Its eyes still stared, its tongue protruded from its parted lips, and its body was covered with red blood and black burn marks.

So great was the silence that Durotan could hear his own ragged breathing and that of Orgrim. The two looked at each other, stunned by what they had just witnessed.

Both had seen the draenei before, of course, but only at a distance. They came now and then to each clan, ready to trade their carefully crafted tools and weapons and decorative pieces of carved stone in exchange for the thick pelts of the forest animals, brightly woven blankets, and raw materials the orcs culled from land and stone. It had always been an occasion of interest in the clans, but the exchanges only lasted a few hours. The draenei—blue-skinned, soft-spoken, eerily arresting—did not invite closeness, and no clan leader had ever asked them to stay and share their hospitality. Relationships were cordial but aloof, and everyone involved seemed to want it that way.

Now the leader of the group that had arrived so unexpectedly strode over to Durotan. From his position on the earth, Durotan saw what he had never noticed when he had regarded the draenei from a distance.

Their legs did not go straight from their torsos to the earth. They curved backward, like … like a talbuk’s, and ended in cloven hooves that were encased in metal from the shiny blue hoof upward. And … yes, it was most definitely a thick, hairless tail that swished back and forth. Now their owner was bending over him, offering a strong blue hand. Durotan blinked, staring a moment longer at the unexpected shape of the draenei’s feet and the reptilian tail, then got to his feet unaided. He looked into a face that bore strange plating on its head, like armor that had grown there. Black hair and a beard flowed over a colorful tabard, and the piercing, glowing eyes were the color of a winter lake. “You are injured?” the draenei asked in halting common Orcish, his tongue obviously having trouble wrapping itself around the guttural syllables.

“Only my pride,” Durotan heard Orgrim mutter in his clan dialect. He, too, was somewhat stung. The draenei had obviously saved both their lives, and he was grateful of course. But they had seen two proud orc youths running from danger. Granted, that danger had been very real—one blow from that gigantic club would have squashed him and Orgrim into two small, crumpled piles—but still.

The draenei may or may not have heard or understood Orgrim; Durotan thought he saw the lips curve in a smile. The draenei glanced skyward, and to his dismay, Durotan realized that the sun was low on the horizon.

“You two have wandered far from home, and the sun settles to sleep,” he said. “Which clan do you hail from?”

“I am Durotan, of the Frostwolf clan, and this is Orgrim of the Blackrock clan.”

The draenei looked startled. “Two different clans? Were you challenging one another, that you wandered so far from your respective homes?”

Durotan and Orgrim exchanged glances. “Yes … and no,” Durotan said. “We are friends.”

The draenei’s eyes widened. “Friends … from two different clans?”

Orgrim nodded. “Yes.” He added, somewhat defensively, “It is not traditional, but it is not forbidden.”

The draenei nodded, but he still looked surprised. He regarded both of them for a moment, then turned to two of his companions and murmured something in his native tongue. Durotan thought the language profoundly musical, like the sound of a stream meandering over stones, or a bird’s call. The other two draenei listened intently, then nodded. One took a waterskin from his belt, drank deeply, and then began to run with a gait nearly as smooth and swift as a talbuk’s, heading southwest where the Frostwolf lands were. The second raced toward the cast, to the Blackrock clan.