Christie Golden: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm

Garrosh shifted the weight on his shoulder. "It was never intended to be a permanent site. Not when Warsong Hold was so close."

Cairne eyed the great hall and the tower. "Then why build these?"

Garrosh did not answer. Cairne let him remain silent for a time. Garrosh might be many things, but the taciturn type he was not. He would speak… eventually.

And sure enough, Garrosh said after a moment, "We built these when we landed. At first there was no trouble. Then a foe unlike any I have encountered came out of the mists. It does not sound as if you have been troubled by them but, I confess, I have wondered if they would return."

A foe so powerful as to give Garrosh pause? "What is this enemy that gave you such trouble?" Cairne asked.

"They are called the Kvaldir," Garrosh said. "The tuskarr think they are the angered spirits of slain vrykul." Cairne exchanged glances with Maaklu Cloudcaller, the tauren who happened to be walking alongside them. Cloudcaller was a shaman, and as he regarded Cairne he nodded slightly. None of Cairne's landing party had personally seen the vrykul, but Cairne knew of them. They looked like humans — if humans were larger than tauren and sometimes had skin that was covered in ice, or made of metal or stone. They were definitely full of violence and power. Cairne was comfortable with the idea of being surrounded by spirits, but those were tauren ancestors. Their presence was positive. The thought of vrykul ghosts haunting this place was not a pleasant one. Cloudcaller, too, looked a bit uneasy at the notion.

"They come when the mists are thickest. The tuskarr say that is what enables them to manifest," Garrosh continued. He sounded skeptical. Too, there was a strange tone in his voice. Embarrassment?

"They terrified many of my warriors and were so powerful they forced us to withdraw to Warsong Hold. I was finally able to take back this site when the Lich King fell."

And there was the shame. Not in seeing "ghosts," if indeed they were such, but in being forced to run from them. No wonder Garrosh had not mentioned why he had abandoned Garrosh's Landing, a place he might logically feel some pride in and fondness for.

Cairne kept his gaze carefully averted from the scowling Garrosh, who was clearly ready to defend his honor if he heard anything he could perceive as an insult to his courage.

"The Scourge do not come to these shores," Garrosh added, somewhat defensively. "It seems even they do not like the Kvaldir."

Well, if the Kvaldir had not attacked them so far, Cairne would not complain. "Warsong Hold is a better strategic site," was all Cairne said.

It was midday on the second day when Cairne bade farewell to Saurfang. He gripped the other's hand hard. Garrosh might have joked about the peace and quiet of remaining up here with but a skeleton crew, but the reality would be something else. And there would likely be ghosts aplenty to haunt Saurfang, if only in his memories. Cairne knew that, and as he looked into Saurfang's eyes, he knew that the orc knew it, too.

Cairne wanted to thank him again, to offer encouragement, praise for a task so successfully completed. For being able to bear such burdens. But Saurfang was an ore, not a blood elf, and lavish compliments and effusion would not be welcomed or wanted.

"For the Horde," Cairne said.

"For the Horde," Saurfang replied, and it was enough.

The fighters who comprised the last wave of the Warsong offensive to depart Northrend shouldered their weapons and began to trudge westward, through the quarry and up onto the Plains of Nasam.

As had happened every time they went this way, the fog closed slowly about them. Cairne felt nothing supernatural about it; but, as he would freely admit, he was a warrior, not a shaman. Still, he had not endured what Garrosh and his fighters had, nor seen what they had seen, and he knew there were such things as angry spirits.

The fog slowed them down, but nothing unusual rose up to attack them. As they made their way to the beach and the small boats waiting for them, however, Cairne slowed. He sensed… something. His ears twitched, and he sniffed the cool, moist air.

As Cairne strained his old eyes to try to see in the obscuring mist, he could make out the faint, ghostly shape of a ship. No, more than one… two… three…

"Kvaldir!" roared Garrosh.

For a few precious moments, everyone struggled against a sense of fear, forcing themselves to focus on the approaching battle. The ships emerged from the mist's veil, manned by the dead. Pale, they were; pale with a tinge of green, of rot, and wrapped with seaweed, their clothing sodden and torn. The oars went up, and the Kvaldir, crying and moaning, leaped into the water and surged upon the shore.

They were everywhere, enormous and ghastly, moving faster than such supposedly undead things should by all rights be able to move, to interpose themselves between the Horde warriors and Warsong Hold. The second ship pulled up alongside Mannoroth's Bones, and the things that some called spirits of the dead began to attack the living. On the shore, others closed the ring about Cairne and Garrosh, moving so swiftly for the attack that some of Garrosh's fighters died before they had even had a chance to swing their weapons.

Cairne, too, moved more swiftly than one would think. Unlike some of the ores, who were cowering or even running in terror, he had no fear of the dead. Let them come. With a deep bellow he charged one of the giant, undead warriors, attempting to use the rune - covered haft of his ancestral spear to knock some of the others aside. They were swift to evade the spear, and even over the moaning and shrieking, Cairne heard the wind as the spear struck nothing. The runespear was blessed by a shaman, as all Cairne's weapons were; if it encountered even a ghost, it would do harm.

"Stand and fight!" Cairne bellowed. "There is nowhere to flee!"

He was right. They were trapped between the hold and their ship on the ocean, which itself was coming under attack. They were caught out in the open and —

No. Not in the open.

"Retreat!" Cairne roared, reversing his previous command. He pitched his voice as loud as possible over the unearthly cries of the Kvaldir and the battle shouts of the pathetically few who were left of the once - vast Warsong offensive. "Retreat to the great hall at Garrosh's Landing!" They could catch their breaths, plan, regroup. Anything was better than standing and being slaughtered with no real strategy for fighting back.

Considering the orc’s penchant for reckless action, Cairne half - expected Garrosh to protest. But instead Garrosh took up the cry, blowing a horn he had strapped to his hip and pointing to the west. At once the Horde members moved in that direction, hacking at the undead creatures as they went. Some of them didn't make it, decapitated or gutted by the double - bladed and very corporeal axes of the Kvaldir. Even Cairne was hard pressed to keep moving forward, and at one point a pale hand closed upon and twined about the runespear, threatening to tug it from his grasp. Cairne did not resist the pull, instead letting the hideous thing haul him to itself.

No enemy would be permitted to abscond with the runespear.

He shouted a battle cry and stabbed.

It sank deep. The Kvaldir's eyes widened. He opened his mouth, spat blood, and sank to the earth. Cairne stared. Flesh and blood and bone!

Garrosh was right to be skeptical of the tuskarr stories. The ghostly spirits were nothing more than living beings. And anything that lived… could die.

The revelation fueled Cairne as he moved steadily toward the great hall, partially obscured now by the strange mist that was nothing more sinister than a cover for the vrykul — for so they had to be. Some of the others had gotten there before him. Cairne saw with dismay that two of the three doors had been damaged. One was gone completely; the other hung by a single hinge.