TWO

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 orcs, 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.

His eyes fell upon a table where once, in pleasanter times, the soldiers would gather for a repast. Indeed, a weather-beaten lantern, mug, and bowl still sat on the table. With a single sweep of his huge arm, Cairne sent them flying, then grasped the table in both hands. Grunting slightly, he lifted the table, attached benches and all, and hurried to the doorway as fast as he could.

Garrosh grinned. “You are smart and strong, old bull,” he said with admiration that, while grudging, was nonetheless genuine. “You! Grab those crates! Everyone else, hurry, inside, inside!”

They obeyed. Cairne waited, singlehandedly holding aloft the table, until the last one, a troll bleeding badly from a sliced-up leg, hobbled into the great hall. The second he was inside, Cairne ducked in after him and slammed the table into the doorway at a slight angle so that it wedged in firmly. Not a heartbeat later, the makeshift door shuddered under the thump of an attack. There was more pounding and the moans of the “undead.”

Cairne gulped in air as he continued to barricade the door. “They are foes, but they are living foes!” he told them. “Garrosh, you were right. The Kvaldir are no more or less than vrykul. They use the mist and costumes as weapons to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies before they attack. It fooled me at first, too—until the runespear impaled one of them and I realized what they were doing.”

“Whatever they be, we cannot hold much longer,” gasped Cloudcaller, leaning his broad back against the “door” as it shook. Others braced against it. The shaman and druids among the group were desperately trying to attend to the wounded, of which there were many—too many. Fully a third of the already diminished group was injured, some of them seriously. “The crates—any weapons in them? Anything we could use?”

It was a good idea, but one without hope. Most of them had dropped the supplies as they turned to battle their attackers. Carrying the heavy crates with them as they headed for the safety of the great hall would have been foolish.

“We have nothing,” Cairne said. “Nothing save our courage.”

He had just taken a deep breath, hoping to say a few words to inspire his and Garrosh’s people as they fought what would doubtless be their last battle, when Garrosh interrupted him.

“We have our courage, yes,” said Garrosh, “but we also have something more. And we will show these false ghosts the price they must pay for attempting to trick us. They think we are vulnerable outside of the hold. And they want to take back this landing. They will know the wrath of the Horde!”

He strode to the center of the hall and flipped back a woven rug that had been lying on the floor. Beneath it was a trap door. With a grunt of effort, Garrosh slowly tugged it open. The trap door fell back with a clang, revealing a small, hollowed-out area.

And in that area, piled high like watermelons, were grenades.

Some of the warriors cheered. The others looked at Garrosh, confused.

“You left them here, just in case, did you not?” Cairne asked, surprised. “In case Warsong Hold fell?”

The orcs were not overfond of contingency plans, Cairne had learned. They did not like to even conceive of possible defeat. And yet it was obvious that Garrosh had done exactly that—left a crate of valuable weapons buried in the sand, in case at some later time, when the orcs were in full retreat, they would have need of them.

Garrosh nodded shortly. “It is not a pleasant thought.”

“But it is the mark of a leader, to hold all possibilities, even the unpleasant—even the unthinkable.” Cairne said. “It was well done, Garrosh.” He inclined his head in a gesture of respect even as a particularly vigorous assault nearly caved his door in.

What was left of the Warsong offensive all scrambled for the small but lethal weapons. The pounding had not ceased all this time. The crates that had been piled up were being pushed ever forward, and the table that served as a door was starting to splinter before the onslaught. Cairne shifted his hooves and repositioned his back to keep up the support as the others loaded themselves down with grenades. Garrosh rose and nodded to Cairne.

“One, two, three!” cried Cairne. On “three” Cairne and the orcs guarding the other two doors stepped back, Cairne dropping the table and the orcs swinging wide the doors. Garrosh was there, a massive battleaxe in each hand, screaming his father’s war cry and slashing at the false ghosts, all violence and death. Cairne stepped back, allowing the others to precede him in their race for the ship. They threw the grenades into the cluster of Kvaldir. There were several explosions, and then the path was clear—save of bodies. They had a few precious moments before the next wave of Kvaldir came.

“Go, go!” he urged, turning back to where his spear lay. He quickly strapped it to his back. If he needed to fight in the next few minutes, all would be lost anyway. The real fight would have to take place on the ship. His hands free, he scooped up a badly injured orc as if the warrior weighed nothing at all, and began running as fast as he could toward the ship.

Mannoroth’s Bones had been damaged and was under attack, but it looked still seaworthy, at least to Cairne’s eyes.

He felt a tug of pain in his heart as a troll fell not four paces in front of him, an axe in his back. There would be time to honor the fallen later, but now there was nothing Cairne could do but leap over the body and keep running.

His hooves sank in the sand. He felt slow, and not for the first time cursed what age had done to his body. There was a hideous cry, and one of the Kvaldir lunged at him, swinging his axe with both brawny arms. Cairne dodged as best he could, but he was not swift enough and grunted in pain as it sliced his side.

And then at last he was there, delivering his charge into one of the small skiffs. It pushed off immediately, crammed to overflowing with wounded. Immediately it became a target, and Cairne had to stand in the small, rocking boat and fight off the Kvaldir while two orcs rowed furiously. At one point, he looked back at the shoreline, dotted with the corpses of “ghosts.”

And the corpses of brave members of the Horde.

But some of those “corpses” were still moving. Cairne narrowed his eyes and leaped out of the boat as it pulled up alongside Mannoroth’s Bones. He turned back, half-swimming, half-wading, slogging onto the shore toward the injured. Cairne intended to do everything he could to keep that number from increasing.

Six times back and forth he went, bearing those who could not get themselves to safety. Garrosh’s group had exhausted their supply of grenades, and the shore was equal parts blood and sand now. The horrific, muddy concoction sucked at his hooves as he ran. He heard Garrosh’s war cry through it all, the sound heartening his warriors and even Cairne until at last all who could be rescued had been.

“Garrosh!” shouted Cairne.

Bleeding from half a dozen wounds, his breath ragged, Cairne looked about for Garrosh. He was over there, whirling his two axes, shouting incoherently as he severed limbs and was spattered with blood. So lost in the battle haze was he that he paid no attention to Cairne’s cries. The tauren hastened over to him and grabbed Garrosh’s arm. Startled, the orc whirled, axes raised, but halted the blow in time.

“Retreat! We have the wounded! The battle is on the ship now!” Cairne shouted at him, shaking his arm.

Garrosh nodded. “Retreat!” he cried, his voice carrying over the fray. “Retreat to the ship! We will continue to fight and slaughter our enemies on the water!”

The few combatants left fighting turned at once and hastened to the shore, leaping into the boats even as they pushed off for Mannoroth’s Bones. A Kvaldir wrenched one hapless orc from inside the skiff and dragged her onto the shore, where he proceeded to hack her limb from limb. Cairne forced himself to shut out her cries, shoving the last boat off with all his strength and clambering into it.

There were several of the giant humanoids on the ship already. Captain Tula was shouting to shove off, and her crew was scrambling to obey. The anchor was hauled up and the ship pushed off toward open water. The Kvaldir vessels, wreathed in the cold, clinging fog, pursued. The sight was less frightening now that everyone understood they faced a living foe, but the danger was still very real. The crew had held its own while the remnants of the Warsong offensive struggled to get to the ship, but now they were able to attend to their duties while the soldiers fought. The Kvaldir ships pulled up alongside, close enough for Cairne to see the leering, furious faces of the murderous enemy.

“Do not let them board!” shouted Garrosh. He dispatched a foe and, leaping over the still-twitching corpse, chopped the hands off of a Kvaldir attempting to climb aboard. The Kvaldir screamed and fell into the freezing waters. “Tula! Push us out to sea! We must outrun them!”

The frantic crew obeyed. Cairne, Garrosh, and the others fought like demons. Archers and gunmen fired at the enemy vessel. Several bowmen lit their arrows on fire, aiming for the sails. A great cheer went up as one of them caught. Bright orange flames pierced the cold gray of the fog, and the sail began to crackle as the fire spread. Mannoroth’s Bones lurched toward open water. Cairne fully expected the Kvaldir to follow, but they did not. He heard cries in their ugly language as some hastened to put out the fire that was consuming their ship while others rushed to the bow and hurled curses at the rapidly disappearing Horde vessel.

Cairne suddenly felt the pain of his wounds and grimaced. He permitted himself to lie down in the boat and close his eyes for a moment. Let the pretend ghosts rail. Today, fewer than they expected have fallen to them.

And for now, Cairne thought wearily, that was enough.