Christie Golden - Warcraft - Official Movie Novelization

Gul’dan roared, in pain, not anger, this time. He hurled Durotan several yards. Durotan hit the earth hard, gasping. Snarling, Gul’dan charged his enemy. He was huge, his body bristling with unnatural spikes and horns, his muscles stronger than Durotan’s. He pummeled his enemy with punches, each landing hard. Durotan rallied. He deflected the warlock’s next powerful swing with a kick, and dodged. Again Gul’dan struck, and again Durotan evaded it, landing a punch of his own.

But this time, Gul’dan caught his opponent’s arm and pulled him in. His splayed his hand and pressed it to Durotan’s chest. Green light sparked around his fingers as Gul’dan looked about furtively.

Suddenly, Durotan’s legs quivered, threatening to buckle. Weakness seeped through him as he saw a thin, white trail pass from his body into Gul’dan’s hand. Before his shocked eyes, the warlock’s body grew even larger, the muscles swelling. Chuckling, Gul’dan seized Durotan’s arm and wrenched it out of its socket. There was white-hot pain, and then a snapping sound, and then Durotan’s arm dangled, useless.

He dropped to his knees. Gul’dan pulled back, leering triumphantly, then lifted his gargantuan green fist for the death blow.

Durotan shouted and abruptly lunged upward. His head slammed into Gul’dan’s chest, sending the other staggering backward a few steps. He did not give the warlock a chance to recover. He clenched his good fist and landed blow after blow. Each time his fist struck unnatural flesh, he held the face of a Frostwolf in his mind, fueling it with passion and righteousness. Kurvorsh. Shaksa. Kagra. Zakra. Nizka.

Draka.

Go’el.

A sound penetrated his ears that was not the singing of his blood in his own veins, or the cries of the watching crowd. The voice was human, and yet not, and it was chanting. Hope surged inside Durotan. Gul’dan needed to be at the portal, draining innocent human lives to open the Great Gate and bring in the rest of the Horde. Instead, he was here—fighting Durotan.

But Gul’dan heard it, too, and slammed his clenched fist into Durotan’s wounded arm. The Frostwolf bellowed in agony, but held onto consciousness by sheer will as he staggered back and fell to his hands and knees.

Gul’dan cursed, not pressing the attack. “I have no time for this,” he muttered. “Blackhand!”

The warchief looked over at Durotan appraisingly, taking note of the useless, dangling arm, the blood on his face and body, his shuddering breaths. Then his gaze traveled to Orgrim, and the banner Durotan had so defiantly sunk into the earth. Finally, he looked at Gul’dan.

And grinned.

“This is the mak’gora,” Blackhand said. “We will respect our traditions. Keep fighting!”

Gul’dan gave his warchief a furious look, and a fresh sense of hope flooded Durotan. If the warchief was beginning to see how vile, how dishonorable Gul’dan was, then surely the others would as well. The warlock charged now, with not a sneering arrogance, but an urgency and desperation. It made his blows harder when they landed, but it also made him careless. Again, and yet again, Durotan was able to evade a blow that could break his skull and deliver a powerful attack of his own, even with but one good hand. But when they connected, Gul’dan’s blows were vicious. More than once, Durotan felt a rib snap beneath the warlock’s clenched fist, but he refused to cease.

Keep going. For your clan. For the orcs who yet live. For their children.

A blow to the gut that had him doubled over and barely able to stumble out of the way. A sliding punch that cost him his sight in one eye. He endured it all.

He kept fighting. And he felt the tide start to turn.

What had once been jeers had turned to first silence, then murmurs of admiration. Gul’dan’s head whipped up and he stared at the orcs. “His” Horde.

Then, his lip curled with pure loathing, he slammed his hand against Durotan’s chest, and began to drain him.

A gasp rose up among the crowd. “Gul’dan cheats!” came an outraged voice. Even as Durotan felt his life being siphoned to further Gul’dan’s grotesqueness, he felt joy. He had done it. It was impossible for the warlock to conceal his handiwork; Durotan knew he now resembled the draenei prisoners, their lives sucked from them until their bodies were misshapen and dessicated. He had forced Gul’dan to show the Horde exactly what he was.

Gul’dan drew back his hand, wreathed in the white mist of Durotan’s life, clenched his fist, and slammed it full force into the Frostwolf’s chest. The pain was unbearable. Durotan flew through the air, landing hard. His connection to the living now was but the finest thread.

Cries were going up, now. “You cheat, Gul’dan!” “Shame on you!” “This is not our way!”

Durotan had to rise, once more. Every sinew and muscle, every drop of blood was fiery agony. He fought it through sheer force of will, climbing to his feet and swaying. He could barely draw breath, but he filled his lungs and cried, “Gul’dan! You have no honor!”

With a low growl that grew louder with each step, Gul’dan bore down on Durotan, not swinging his arms this time, but holding them open, reaching for his enemy. Durotan struggled, but the arms around him were as strong as bands of iron, and he had no strength left. Gul’dan clutched him close in a travesty of an embrace, utterly heedless now of what the Horde saw. He crushed Durotan’s rapidly deteriorating body to his, so that more of his skin could pull forth the Frostwolf’s life energy. Durotan felt his spine snap. Through the haze of agony Durotan could see strange golden light pouring off his body, as his life—his soul? He did not know—went to feed the warlock’s ravenous, fel-driven hunger. Gul’dan smiled up at him ferally, triumphantly, as he paraded about the ring displaying Durotan’s dying body. Then, at last, when he could get no more from the Frostwolf, he threw Durotan down in disgust.

There would be no more rising for Durotan.

He found himself gazing up at Orgrim, but could not speak. He tried to lift a hand imploringly, but he could only twitch his fingers. But Orgrim understood. His eyes filled with tears, and he nodded. He, who had betrayed the Frostwolves, would now speak for them.

And that was all right.

The orcs had seen. Durotan had done what he had come to do.

It was enough.

Orgrim looked around at the assembled orcs. “You will follow this thing ?” he cried, putting all his hatred and contempt into the word. “Will you? You will follow this demon ? I will not. I follow a true orc. A chieftain!”

The crowd stared, murmuring. “He does not even look orc now,” Orgrim heard. Gul’dan stood, panting, daring them to defy him. Orgrim saw several orcs turn to leave. Some of them, he noticed, had the green tinge to their skin. They had seen their fate played out before them should they continue to use the fel, and were choosing to have no part in it.

Orgrim turned back to his friend and chieftain, whom he had betrayed. Durotan, son of Garad, son of Durkosh, was still. But he had died as he had lived, with courage, and conviction, and in a righteous battle against a terrible foe.

He recalled Durotan’s words, before the Frostwolves had marched south to join the Horde: There is one law, one tradition, which must not be violated. And that is that a chieftain must do whatever is truly best for the clan.

Today, Durotan’s clan had not been Frostwolves. His clan had consisted of the entire Horde.

Orgrim knelt beside his fallen chieftain and grasped one of Durotan’s tusks. He twisted it free. “For your son,” he told Durotan. “So your spirit can teach him.”

“I will deal with you later, Orgrim Doomhammer,” Gul’dan threatened. Several orcs were striding away in disgust after the offensive spectacle they had just witnessed. One of them spat, “Your power is not worth the price, warlock!” Orgrim paused, wanting to see this play out. Gul’dan, all but frothing at the mouth in his rage, reached out his hand. Three orcs who had the misfortune to stand near him—including, Orgrim saw, many who had been faithful to the warlock—arched in agony as their life essences were not siphoned, not extracted, but savagely ripped from them. The white energy flowed into Gul’dan’s outstretched hand. The warlock raised his other hand, and from it streamed the sickly, all-too-familiar color of fel energy.