Christie Golden: War Crimes

Varian couldn’t summon the energy for a witty retort. He blinked, trying to focus. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees, wondering if perhaps the felguard had been right.

Gentle hands touched him. There was an abrupt sear of agony as the arrow was tugged from his shoulder, replaced immediately by warmth and a sense of well-being. He gave a grateful look to the night elf priestess, a slip of a thing with long, dark purple hair and lavender skin. She ducked her head shyly and turned, lifting her hands in supplication to pray for the white-haired warlock whose felguard had saved his life.

Varian rushed again into the fray, launching at a cluster of five pirates who were ganging up on a young orc shaman. Together, he and the orc defeated the pirates, nodded in acknowledgment, and looked for more enemies.

Shadows again passed over them. Varian expected another attack, but this time, seven dragons wheeled away from the immediate area of the temple. For a moment he wondered why, and then he knew. They were heading for the bridges. Almost nonchalantly, a dragon struck at one with a massive tail, snapping the ropes and sending the pandaren reinforcements unlucky enough to be crossing hurtling to their deaths. Another grabbed the ropes of a second bridge in a great foreclaw and simply yanked.

Everyone who had not already reached safety was now stranded in the courtyard and training ground.

More pirates dropped from the sky. Varian had thought that they had been sent to occupy the guards outside, but now he saw that while some of them were engaged in combat, most of them were heading for the temple interior.

His son was in there. Growling under his breath, Varian took off in that direction. He heard the crack of rifle fire and then felt as though his left side had been hit by a hammer. Grimacing as pain followed almost at once, Varian pressed a hand over the wound and kept going. But before he covered more than a few yards, an enormous shadow fell over him. Varian stopped in his tracks, whipping up the broadsword.

“Zaela!” he grunted in disbelief.

She was crouched atop the great infinite dragon, grinning maniacally, an axe in her hands. “King Varian Wrynn! I free my warchief and take your head all in one day!”

“Come get it then!” he shouted. Springing into action and ignoring the increasingly sharp, white-hot agony of the bullet wound, he leaped up as high as he could, seized her ankle, and yanked her off the dragon.

She had not been expecting that, and landed badly. Her dragon had to veer and rise abruptly or risk slamming into the temple wall. If Varian had been wielding a smaller sword, that would have been the end of her, but he had to pull back to use the broadsword. As he did so, Zaela snarled, bit his ungloved hand, and wrapped one leg around his. He didn’t fall, but he stumbled. The orc warlord scrambled to her feet and raised her more maneuverable axe, about to bring it down on his midsection.

She screamed as a blast of fire exploded into her.

Still on the flagstone, Varian turned to see Jaina Proudmoore, her extended hands already forming the motions to make a more lethal spell, a fireball beginning to manifest between her palms. A crack rang out and Jaina twitched, her eyes going wide, the nascent fireball suddenly snuffed out as red began to blossom across her chest.

“Jaina!” Varian shouted.

Stumbling, her torso scorched, Zaela began to lurch down the corridor into the temple. Varian could still catch her, still kill the orc and end any threat she would ever pose. But he did not follow.

Others would stop her, or not. But someone needed his help more than he needed to kill.

Varian reached instead for Jaina.

Despite the excruciating pain of the burns along her torso, Zaela dearly wished she had the time to spare to take Varian Wrynn’s head, as she had promised. Garrosh would no doubt have displayed the trophy to loud cheering, and she, Zaela, would be the one who had scored the kill. More important than her ego was to make sure that Garrosh had been able to escape cleanly, and at first, when she entered the temple, it was impossible to tell. It was a battlefield condensed into a small, confined arena. She saw at least one blue and one bronze dragon hovering over the fray, doing what they could to attack the enemy without harming their allies. A few of the smaller infinites had actually come into the temple, and they had no such restrictions. Elsewhere, the pirates were shouting joyfully as they gave vent to their bloodlust, pausing in their slaughter only long enough to rifle through the pockets and pouches of the fallen—friend or foe.

Zaela’s nostrils flared with contempt. She did not charge into the fight, though her racing heart longed to do so. Instead, gritting her teeth against the agony of her burns, she threaded through the combatants, searching for her warchief. There was no sign of the mighty Garrosh, or the slender high elf his time-walking friend had pretended to be, and joy flooded her. Her mission was now both successful and complete. There was no more need to linger here.

“My Dragonmaw!” she shouted, lifting her gore-stained axe without revealing the pain the action caused. “The infinites await us outside, to bear us to safety and victory! Leave the pirates to their fate!”

A cheer went up among her people, and she took pleasure in the look of betrayal on the stupid faces of their onetime allies. Fools. Not one of them had ever asked how they would be leaving the battle. They would now either die or rot in prison. They would not be missed—by anyone.

It seemed to end as soon as it began. The pirates, somehow taken by surprise at Zaela’s casual abandonment of them, were quickly rounded up and turned over to the pandaren. More frustrating was the escape of most of the Dragonmaw on the backs of the infinite dragons. Those that remained behind either were already dead or fell within minutes.

Once the fighting was over, Go’el searched for Aggra. He found her holding their child, standing over the corpses of three pirates who had apparently been foolish enough to attack her. She appeared tired, probably, Go’el thought, from healing as well as fighting. Aggra turned to him as he approached. Go’el wrapped mate and child both in his powerful arms.

“You have fought against yourself ere now, my heart,” Aggra said as she stepped back to gaze up at him fondly. “But always before, it has been more . . . metaphorical.”

His eyes were somber as he looked at her. “I pray to the ancestors to never have to do so again.” To have seen himself as Blackmoore’s obedient pawn had been unnerving. He had struggled to accept this part of himself, per Baine’s wise words, instead of killing this Thrall—a thrall in every sense of the word. And in the end, it was the name that enabled him to do so. He had been Thrall, and so he understood what he had left behind; this orc had never known he could become Go’el. It seemed as though all the others had also won their difficult personal battles.

“Go’el!” The voice was Varian’s, but weakened and hoarse. Go’el turned and his blue eyes widened in horror.

Jaina . . .

Varian, himself bleeding from several wounds, staggered in, carrying the archmage’s frighteningly limp body. He made it a few more steps before his legs buckled, but he did not drop his precious burden. Go’el was there, cradling Jaina and lowering her with care to the ground. Aggra handed the baby to Eitrigg and followed Go’el.

“She has lost a great deal of blood,” Aggra said, but even so, her brown hands were reaching into her ever-present pouch of totems. Go’el imitated her, grasping the totem for water and asking for its healing touch, but he felt hope slipping away with every breath. There appeared to be only the single bullet wound, but it was close to her heart, and he was drained. There was a waxy pallor to Jaina’s skin, and Go’el couldn’t even see if her chest rose and fell.