Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War (13 page)

But most of those he commanded were fleeing. And Malkorok could not blame them. It was, after all, what Garrosh had counted on.

Terrified beyond thought, the majority had simply flung down their weapons and raced for the safety of the water or the hills. Anywhere but here, facing death from creatures made of liquid rock and hatred. The fleeing soldiers made easy prey for the Horde fighters who were waiting at all the exits. Almost too easy. If any survived, Malkorok mused, they would have to count themselves among the luckiest of beings.

Malkorok continued to charge at the Alliance soldiers seeking escape. They were too frightened to even fight well, and he cut them down swiftly. After a few moments, he realized there was no more activity in the immediate area. What Alliance members he could see lay very still. He looked around, eyes narrowed, for any pockets of fighting. There was none. Even so, the molten giants continued to march, bellowing and slamming at the remains of the walls, smashing the mighty cannons and other engines of war like so much kindling.

Malkorok spied Garrosh standing over the body of a worgen. Its head lay a yard away, its lupine features locked in a snarl but its eyes wide with fear. Garrosh turned to the Blackrock orc, his face and body spattered with blood, and smiled fiercely around his tusks.

“Well?” he demanded.

“We have won, my warchief!” said Malkorok. “I see no Alliance other than corpses.”

Garrosh’s grin widened and he threw back his head, spread his
arms, and let forth a mighty howl of triumph. “Victory to the Horde! Victory to the Horde!”

The cry was picked up and repeated, sweeping like wildfire through the troops. Malkorok noticed that the molten giants slowed, then stopped, and he realized that the dark shaman who had summoned them had also heard the happy shouts of victory and were now sending the earth elementals back to whence they had come.

Or… attempting to.

The molten giants, it seemed, had no wish to lose this form. They turned slowly, small heads with glowing red eyes moving as they sought their “masters.” Grunting, they began to surge forward.

Malkorok and Garrosh looked about for the dark-clad forms, who were gesticulating with a vigor that bordered on frantic. For a moment, elementals and shaman were locked in a struggle of wills. Then, as one, the molten giants opened their mouths to let out a chilling cry of both rage and defeat.

The earth itself replied.

Malkorok felt the ground beneath him tremble, slightly at first, then with more intensity. Alarmed, he glanced about, but there was no shelter, not here. There were only corpses, and weapons, and rubble where a hold had once stood. Shouts of warning filled the air as many lost their footing, falling hard on the earth and clinging to it even though it was now the enemy. Suddenly dark clouds gathered. Lightning flashed, and a nearly deafening crack of thunder followed immediately.

The mouths of the molten giants kept opening, wider, wider still, as their heads and shoulders started to melt and dissolve. The elemental beings lost cohesion, their limbs flowing back into a single mass. The color faded, cooled, becoming first dark red, then brown, as the elementals shrank back to their original forms—now merely boulders, nothing more.

A final buck and shudder from the earth, and then it was still. The silence pressed like cotton on Malkorok’s ears, hot from the noise that had assaulted them. The Horde members who had fallen to the earth got to their feet, cautiously, and then cheers filled the air once again.

“We have not only defeated the Alliance,” said Garrosh, stepping
beside Malkorok and clapping him on the back, “we have shown our mastery over the very elements!”

“What you have shown,” said a deep, rumbling voice that was rich and cold with fury, “is that you are reckless, Garrosh Hellscream!”

Both orcs whirled to see Baine Bloodhoof and one of his shaman. Baine was in full war regalia, his face decorated, but not with war paint. His armor, too, was spattered with blood. But he was not reveling in victory.

Baine continued. “Kador Cloudsong tells me that the Earthen Ring has specifically forbidden the sort of thing you have meddled with, Hellscream.”

Malkorok frowned. “You will address him as ‘warchief,’” the Blackrock orc said in a low voice.

“Very well.
Warchief,
” said Baine, “your choice to use these—these molten giants is an offense to the Earth Mother and to the Horde you claim to lead! Do you not understand what you are doing? Did you not feel the angry wrath of the earth itself? You could bring about a second Cataclysm. By the ancestors, did you learn nothing from the first one?”

“
I have made the Cataclysm work in our favor!
” shouted Garrosh. “This”—and he stabbed a finger at the rubble that had once been Northwatch Hold—“is the first major step toward complete and utter conquest of this continent! Theramore falls next, and I will use whatever tool I need to in order to achieve these goals, tauren!”

“You will not endanger—”

Malkorok grabbed Baine’s arm and shoved his face up toward the tauren’s. “Silence! You serve at the warchief’s whim, Baine Bloodhoof! Do you offer him insult?
Do you?
Because if you do, I challenge you to a mak’gora!”

He was seething and prayed that the tauren would accept the challenge. This Bloodhoof, like his father before him, had long been a thorn in the side of the orcs. The tauren as a whole were too soft, too pacifistic, and the Bloodhoof were the worst. Malkorok considered Cairne’s death to be a good thing, regardless of how it had happened.
He would deem it an honor to put Baine Bloodhoof out of Garrosh’s misery.

Baine’s eyes flickered with fury; then he growled low. “I have lost many braves today, obeying the warchief’s word. I have no desire to lose any more Horde lives needlessly.” He turned to Garrosh. “I speak only from concern for what may come. You know that, Warchief.”

Garrosh nodded. “Your…
concern
is noted but unwarranted. I know what I am doing. I know what my shaman can handle. These are my methods, High Chieftain. My next step will be to march on Theramore. There, I will cut off the Alliance supply line to Kalimdor and destroy the Proudmoore bitch, who confuses diplomacy with meddling. I have plans for Feathermoon Stronghold, Teldrassil, the Moonglade, Lor’danel, too—all will fall. And then, you will see. You will see how things stand.”

He laughed. “And when you do, I will accept your apology graciously. Until then”—Garrosh sobered—“I will hear no more word from you about any ‘concerns.’ Do we understand each other?”

Baine’s ears flattened and his nostrils flared. “Yes, my warchief. You have made yourself quite clear.”

Malkorok watched him go.

•   •   •

Baine felt as if his own core were molten with outrage. It was with the greatest of efforts that he had kept from exploding in anger when Malkorok had challenged him. He was not afraid Malkorok could defeat him—by all accounts, Cairne had been winning the battle against Garrosh, before Magatha’s poison had claimed him. Baine bore his father’s blood and he had youth on his side. No, he had declined because there was no way to truly win. Poison would be used again, but better hidden this time. Or even if he slew Malkorok, there would be an ambush waiting in the shadows. And then, what would happen to his people? There was no clear successor yet. Garrosh would somehow see to it that a tauren was appointed whose thinking was more in line with his own—or who could be persuaded to think so.

No. His people needed him alive. And so, Baine would live, and do what he was ordered to do. Exactly, and
only,
what he was ordered to do. And when all this exploded in Garrosh’s tattooed face, as it certainly would, Baine, Vol’jin, and other cooler heads would be there to pick up the pieces and protect the Horde. What Garrosh had left of it, at least.

But Baine Bloodhoof was not helpless. The idea that had been forming as he began the march on Northwatch had solidified. Seeing Garrosh’s thoughtless, heedless, selfish manipulation of the elements for personal power had merely confirmed in Baine’s head what he knew in his heart to be the right path.

He had left orders to the tauren he commanded to attend to the bodies of the fallen. They would receive the proper death rituals. Too, he had ordered his people not to desecrate the bodies of the Alliance. Such disregard displeased the Earth Mother, who loved all her children. He did not stay for the ceremonies, leaving them in the capable hands of Kador.

He retired to his traveling teepee, to put his plan into motion. Before lifting the flap, he looked about carefully. There were no signs of any listening ears. To a young brave standing guard outside, he said, “Send me Perith Stormhoof. I have a very important task for him.”

“W
e ought to be able to figure this out,” said Jaina, anger—a feeling she rarely experienced—creeping into her voice. “We’ve got a blue dragon, two extremely skilled magi, and a talented and insightful apprentice. Plus the Kirin Tor at our disposal.” She ran a hand through her blond hair, forcing back the emotion that threatened to cloud her thoughts. She couldn’t afford the luxury of anger or irritation now. She had to think.

“Lady, there simply is
no
record
anywhere
of a spell that can hide a magical object from being sensed by a superior mage,” Kinndy said. “We’ve got to assume that Kalecgos here is superior to any mage of the shorter-lived Azerothian races. And begging your pardon, but it’s hard to sit here and think and ponder and twiddle our thumbs while Northwatch may be falling to the Horde right this moment!”

“Not to make light of your concern, Kinndy,” said Kalecgos, “but if I do not recover the Focusing Iris, the destruction that could be wrought on this world will make the fall of Northwatch look like a captured piece in a board game.”

Kinndy frowned and looked away.

“We all are distracted,” Jaina said, forcing calm upon her mind. “But Kalec’s right. The sooner we can figure out how its abductors are hiding the Focusing Iris from Kalec’s sensing, the safer we will all be.”

Kinndy nodded. “I know, I know,” she said. “But… it’s hard.”

Jaina regarded her apprentice and thought of the last time she had
seen her own master, Antonidas. They had stood together in his happily disorganized study, and she had asked—begged—to stay and help him defend Dalaran against Arthas Menethil. Arthas had already arrived, was standing right outside, shouting taunts that wounded Jaina as much as if they had been physical arrows. How desperately she had wanted to protect the beautiful mage city—and how bitter it had been to know that Arthas, her Arthas, was the one responsible for the threat to it. But Antonidas had refused to permit her to linger. “You have other duties,” he had said. “Keep safe those you have promised to take care of, Jaina Proudmoore. One more or one less here… will make no difference.”

Jaina had no doubt that she and Kalec could make a difference at Northwatch—if they arrived in time. But even if they did, what then? Every minute counted now. They still didn’t know who had the cursed artifact, or what his or her plans were. And so, just as leaving Antonidas to die and Dalaran to fall had been the right thing to do, wrenching though the choice had been, she had to believe that staying here and finding the Iris were the right things to do this time.

Jaina felt the tears in her eyes again, even after so long. She reached over and squeezed Kinndy’s limp hand. “Part of becoming a mage, and having so much responsibility, is learning how to make the hard choices. I understand how you feel, Kinndy. But we are where we need to be.”

Kinndy nodded. The gnome girl was tired, as were they all. Her pink hair was messily tied, and there were circles under her large eyes. Tervosh looked years older than his actual age. Even Kalec’s lips were pressed together in a thin line, and Jaina didn’t want to know what
she
looked like. She’d been avoiding mirrors.

Her brow furrowed as she examined yet another scroll. Then, abruptly, she put it down and looked at them all. “Kinndy is right about the fact that there is no known record of a spell that can do what is being done. But obviously, someone figured it out, because it’s happening right now. Someone is hiding the artifact from Kalecgos. And I simply refuse to believe that we can’t undo this!” She slammed her hand down on the table and they all looked at her, startled. Jaina never
erupted in fits of temper. “If we know what spell was used, or even can make a guess at the type, we can determine how to counter it.”

“But—” Kinndy said, then bit her lip as Jaina shot her a sharp look.

“No buts. No excuses.”

No one knew how to respond. Kalecgos was regarding her curiously, a faint frown of worry on his lips. Once again, Jaina reached for calm. “I’m sorry I raised my voice. But surely, surely we will find a way to solve this!”

Kinndy rose and got them all fresh tea as they sat in silence. Finally, Kalecgos spoke in a halting, uncertain voice.

“Let’s agree that there is no known spell that can hide so powerful an object from a mage as skilled as I am. Especially as I have a unique connection to the Focusing Iris,” he said. Jaina took a sip of the tea, letting the familiar scent and taste steady her, and nodded that he should continue. “So the logical conclusion is either that there is a mage out there clever enough to create such a spell, or… that’s not what’s going on here.”