Providence
Part One
Chapter Two
A shadow walked along the cliffs, watching the pair of Horde below. Garoul put a hand on her lips and laughed quietly to herself. She always traveled alone purely because all other elves she had known frowned upon her and her weird, slightly eccentric nature. The rogue certainly had a thing for trolls—she loved to kill them, but she thought they had a certain charm in their familiarly long ears and lanky build. Reich was the only one she knew of who didn't find this extremely weird. Of course, the human didn't find just about anything strange, except the giant dog-faced protector of the warrior quarter Darnassus. The elf capital always did unnerve him, he always felt rather unwelcome there.
Garoul shook her head and continued her observation. They were clearly headed toward Stonetalon Peak; she was curious as to what they would do there. She felt no protective emotion of the small Alliance outpost, or of any Alliance town beside her homeland of Teldrassil. She did like the busy Stormwind, but not even a Horde raid was stupid enough to take on the capital—it would be complete suicide.
The pair of warriors had stopped along the cliff wall and the troll was hacking away at a vein in the rock. A miner, she thought. She had expected their reaction to the insignia, for everyone knew the Horde had no honor, but she still felt some responsibility for what had happened. Garoul had tried to relay her purpose as best she could, but the situation was much graver than she was sure the troll thought: she had been with Reich and Adelian, a rather dull-witted elf druid in the forests of Darkshore when they came upon a massive orc attempting to bind numerous, gaping wounds. Immediately Reich had approached the much stronger shaman, counting on Garoul and Adelian's support—the three of them could easily take the Corporal, injured as he was, but both night elves immediately called Reich on the dishonor of it.
"Bah, orc trash! They all deserve to die, don't give me that," he chastised them. "I thought you would know better than that, Gari, of all the snobby elves out there." The dark-haired human narrowed his eyes at her, but she would not be cowed. The orc had immediately seen them, but as there was nothing for him to do of it, he merely watched and waited with suspicious eyes. Garoul took a step back and watched Reich withdraw his curved battle axe, when suddenly the shaman Corporal—one could tell his rank from the mark on his insignia—leaned forward and grabbed his poorly-bandaged arm with one hand, speaking pitifully in his brutish language. He looked panicked and while Garoul felt a strange pity, Reich stared at the orc with disgust and raised his axe. Then she saw it: the shaman's blood-red eyeballs, the way his blood was colored too dark to be normal, and how his wounds looked rotten under the heavy silk bandages and white medical tape. "Stop!" she cried, just as Reich brutally beheaded the clearly dying orc. Adelian jogged up beside her and together the night elves pushed Reich out of the way and began inspecting the dead, bleeding body. What had an orc of this caliber been doing in elven territory, alone, and brutally beaten?
"I think," Adelian murmured, running his hand through his dark hair like the girly-man he was, "he looked infected, didn't he?" Garoul slowly nodded her head and leaned down to inspect the wounds, while keeping a safe distance.
"I've seen poisons like this before," she said, sighing, "but I couldn't tell you who did it. Must have been a rogue, but you can only get the ingredients for something like this from the poisoned glades of the undead lands."
Reich was cleaning his blade with an old rag, clearly guilty but hoping his hot-tempered rogue friend wouldn't decide to reprimand him. But Garoul knew his lust for orcish blood often took over and she could not deny that she didn't feel the need to kill him, too.
"Then it must have been an undead who poisoned him," Adelian pointed out, and Garoul gave him an exasperated look.
"I thought that was obvious."
She had kept the insignia in hopes of finding out what had happened to him, or at least done something to make up for her friend's mercilessness. That was, she knew, all that kept the Alliance afloat—honor and dignity. Without them the races of elves, humans, dwarves and gnomes would fall to the barbaric ways of the Horde. But with the language barrier, she knew now it would be impossible and she would merely have to give up on her crusade.
However, she did intend on perhaps killing the one of the warriors if she got a chance to get them alone. They wouldn't be too hard to follow for they knew very few in these mountains would bother them. At their pace, they wouldn't make it to the peak before dark.
It was late evening when Garoul entered the ruins, watched by the eyes of dryads and their truants in the night. The troll and tauren had stopped earlier for the night, but she had gone on to the nearby outpost to find out if the postmaster had come with a reply to her letter. She had called Reich from his travels in Ashenvale to plan another one of their harebrained, nearly suicidal missions. Perhaps with the help of the warrior, she could ambush the traveling Horde and take their heads back to Darnassus. She was eager for some trophies.
Poking through the mailbox, Garoul found what she was looking for: a yellowed piece of folded paper, tied with string and adorned with the words "Gari, you are such an idiot." Laughing she opened the letter and began to read.
"Stonetalon? You are so ridiculous. That place is completely infested! Ah, well, I will see what I can do. Look for me the day after tomorrow, as I am currently staying at the inn in Astranaar and it shouldn't be difficult to find a hippogriff to the peak.
"Don't get eaten.
"Your partner in crime, Reich." Garoul stuffed the note into her pocket and left the small tailoring shop—the only place to house a mailbox in the small outpost. She found her way back to where the two warriors slept and found a spot in the rocks above to meld into the shadows.
--
Hanzar awoke to the sound of a scream. He sat up and, rubbing his eyes, looked around for the source of his unwelcome alarm clock. The sun was just beginning to rise when he poured a bit of cold water on Banik to awaken the unconscious ox. Hearing no sounds of a scuffle, Hanzar merely assumed what he had thought sounded rather familiar was really the squawk of one of Stonetalon's numerous harpies.
It was midmorning when Hanzar and Banik reached the top of the peak, and looked to see the corpses of dryads littering the ethereal ruins of Stonetalon Peak. The pair gaped at the arena of blood; the dryads that hadn't clearly escaped had been slaughtered and their bodies mauled by scavengers and the ravages of the peak. Banik uttered some Taurahe exclamation, and Hanzar could only nod. "Someone beat us here... or a lot of someones."
The warriors walked in silence back to the retreat. It would be the whole day's walk, but neither minded. Hanzar wondered briefly if the skinny little night elf had been caught in the slaughter. Her skin had certainly been a lot softer than trollses, he mused, and he wondered how far that softness went.
Banik had grown rather tired of the mountains and wished he were back in the long prairies of Mulgore. He grew tired of killing and journeying and wished often to become a warrior trainer, living on the cliffs of Thunder Bluff. But like Hanzar, he had a score to settle—it was why they had become friends in the beginning. In the empty deserts of the Barrens, both of them had been strangers, Hanzar a troll from distant forests, and Banik, a peaceful tauren who missed the ways of his people.
They stopped to eat at midday and walked faster afterwards; they were to take wyverns to the less contested lands of the Horde. The retreat glowed in the afternoon light and Banik reveled in the totems guarding Sun Rock's entrance. But rather than issuing the two adventurers a hearty greeting, the guards were talking busily among themselves and stopped suddenly when they saw the warriors.
Hanzar noticed that the whole place seemed to be rather abuzz with commotion. There was a small crowd forming near the inn, and he turned to the orc guard. "What's going on?" he asked.
The orc hefted his axe from one hand to the other. He muttered, "Some idiots found an elf and thought it would be fun to bring her back, alive, and tie her up for everyone to see." Hanzar gaped and looked up at Banik, who was only watching the commotion with perked ears.
The two immediately hastened to the inn, and Hanzar pushed his way through the crowd to see what he had expected to see: the small, wild-faced rogue cursing vehemently in a strange language and struggling against her rope binds. Her weapons had been taken from her and she looked roughed up, with bruises on her face and cuts in her clothes. When she saw him staring at her from the crowd of faces, she swore harder and he thought she had very little of the dignity and calm her race generally prided themselves in.
Hanzar stepped back and met Banik, who stood just inside the inn with some coins in his overlarge hand. "It was her," he said, gesturing to the commotion outside. The tauren slowly nodded his head.
They drank into the evening, being the only ones still at the inn—Sun Rock Retreat was a quiet place, inhabited mostly by tauren and was usually only a day's adventure, as close to the Barrens as it was—and it was nearly midnight when Hanzar stood to his feet, swaying, and shook one fist. He had removed most of his bulky armor and felt much more at ease for it.
"Cummon, Bannie!" Hanzar laughed, but Banik only stared at him, far too large to be overly affected by drink.
"You go, Hanz," he replied and sat back down with his oversized mug. The troll shook his head for a moment, contemplating a situation that didn't exist, and then said, "I will talk to the elf thing," and walked outside.
The cool air immediately sobered him some, but he still tripped when he walked to the post where he saw the night elf sleeping, still tied. He wondered if they would keep her here until she died of starvation—he wouldn't put it past orcs, or whoever had captured the thing and brought her here. Hanzar stumbled closer and when a rock skittered over the ground, the elf jumped awake and stared up at him where he stood. She glared, but it was hard to tell for her eyes shone brightly in the darkness. Whoever had captured her seemed to have removed everything from her body beside her clothes, though looking at her now, it didn't seem there was much of those left, either. Hanzar stepped closer and the rogue hissed a warning. Her bandana was removed and he could now see her smooth cheeks and darkly colored lips.
"Who brought you here, thing?" he asked, his voice slightly slurred. Her blue hair bristled. "Ah, for a nothing, you're cute," the troll murmured. Hanzar reached out and lightly brushed her face with his knuckles. At the contact both creatures suddenly froze. The troll felt his arm start to burn and he quickly pulled his hand away, clutching it and staring at the night elf where she hung. Her eyes were equally wide when Hanzar looked around, and seeing no one, walked to the back of the post and began untying the ropes that held the small elf captive.
--
Garoul trembled. There was only the sound of the troll's scratching and the hum of the night birds, and the elf was unnerved by it. The warrior looked intoxicated, but he seemed to manage the ropes anyway. Why he was freeing her she had no real idea—the touch had burned her face like fire, and she wondered if he had felt the same thing.
She had been sleeping in a place she had thought to be quite hidden, melded into the shadows, when a pair of skeletal fiends had grabbed her, each one holding an arm, and taken all of her things like Defias thieves. They had proceeded to bind her tightly with rope and climbing on their demon horses, had cackled while one threw her over his back. They were rogues as well and had very little trouble seeing her with their keen senses—they were incredibly strong and all the armor on them glowed with enchantments. They chortled to one another and spoke quickly in their cursed Gutterspeak. She could only wonder where they were taking her; the ropes ground into her skin and when they brought her to the small Horde town, disgusting creatures of all kinds had gawked at her where she hung, tied to a totem pole. It was a humiliating experience, and seeing the troll there, she imagined that somehow, he had told his friends of her gesture and that was their purpose for such unreasonable behavior. She would rather have them drive their daggers through her than die of starvation on display for all the Horde to see.
Quite suddenly the ropes fell free and her body, tired and covered with blisters and long gashes from her binding, dropped straight to the ground. Garoul sat for a moment, stunned, and when she tried to get to her feet, she felt incredibly large, strong hands grab her roughly. One seized her shoulder and the other her waist, hefting her up with very little effort until she managed to stand on her feet on her own. Speechless and wide-eyed, Garoul stared at her rescuer. In the light of the moon she could see now his long, thick, dark red hair, which was bound and braided down his back. His tusks were of the shorter variety, curved and pointed upward. His shoulders were broad and well-muscled, but his posture was rather miserable. He had a large, gold, hoop earring in one long ear and trinkets adorned his neck and fingers. A very unique character, she thought, but that might be perhaps she very rarely looked at those she killed, or those she hid from in the shadows. All the Horde looked the same to her, brutish and vile. For a warrior, though, this particular troll did look rather classy.
Garoul touched her chest and said in the clearest tone she could, "Garoul." The troll looked momentarily confused, so she tried again, by pointing at herself and saying, "Ga-roul."
He seemed to catch on and replied, "Hanzar." He gave a tentative smile, though it was hard to see for his tusks obscured most facial expressions.
"Thank you," she said, knowing he probably wouldn't understand, and crouched to stealth—when she felt his hand on her wrist, this time much gentler than he had been previously. She blinked up at him and before she could react he leaned down and, his nose an inch from hers, murmured in a guttural tone and pressed something to her chest. Garoul looked down to see an unranked insignia, marked with strange symbols—she knew at once it was his. Taking a step back the troll made a shooing motion and pointed to the road out of Sun Rock. Still looking tipsy, he turned his back and walked to the inn from which he had come.
Confused and holding the badge tightly in her fingers, Garoul turned, unarmed and clothes ripped to indecency, and left, not bothering to stealth as she went.