Voodoo Child

Chapter 20 – Battle of the Gulch

By Genoscythe

Xan'Jin was, in the deepest and most primal pit of the void that was his soul, pissed off. For half an hour, he had been lying awake in their sad little wagon, trying to block out the incessant buzzing that tore at his brain like hacksaws on a tree. He couldn't tell what it was because a) the tarp was still strung over the wagon, and all he could see was fuzzy darkness and b) he was far too lazy to remove the tarp or, better yet, get out of the wagon altogether and use those lanky posterior appendages that most people called legs to look for himself.

After half an hour, he could take no more. Angrily, he jabbed at the tarp. Oddly enough, it seemed to disintegrate at his touch. Even more oddly, the sky had become very gray, very swirly, and very close to the top of their wagon. Curious, Xan tried to sit up, but shot back down when his tusks made contact with the gray thing, which he decided was definitely not sky. Sparks danced on the floor of the wagon, and Xan's tusks hurt like someone had put a buzzsaw to them.

Incredibly loud, annoying buzz. Swirly gray thing hovering over their wagon. Constant analogies being made to different types of saws. Xan knew he had all the pieces of this puzzle, but he just couldn't put them together.

"It's a giant saw, dumbass," Melchiah growled, arms crossed and eyes smoldering from across the wagon. "We're near the Warsong lumber camp."

"Ah, what a wonderful time to wake up and stretch," Argam murmured, disengaging from dreamland and attempting to stretch out his arms.

"Don't!" Xan cried, and for a moment Argam hesitated. He seemed to be staring curiously at the woodcutting saw hovering over their heads.

"It looks pretty…" Argam mused. "Makes me want to touch it." He continued reaching, to Xan's obvious horror. Leaping as horizontally as he could, Xan grabbed Argam's arms and pinned them to the floor of the wagon.

"No," Xan said firmly. "Joo gonna cut ja hands off, mon."

"I knew that."

"What the hell…?" Zuridan was waking, and he appeared ready to sit up and take off his head. Xan cursed and jumped at Zuridan, leaving Argam free to raise his arms in silent reverence. Pinning down Zuridan, Xan turned to Melchiah.

"Mel, hold – nevamind."

"Relax. I know what to do."

At this, Melchiah uncrossed his arms and planted both hands on the floor of the wagon. The wooden boards began to rot before their eyes, withering and turning black. Soon enough, the wagon came apart and dumped the four Horde soldiers into the bushes of Ashenvale.

Above them, the saw-blade was just finishing with the tree that they had parked next to the night before. As it creaked, sighed, and keeled over, Xan thought he heard a scream from the higher branches and immediately after witnessed something purple and lithe jumping from the falling tree.

The shredder bearing down on them was old and rusty, bearing countless scratches and half-buffed nicks. The goblin sitting on its head looked like an attempt by shredders to turn one of their kind into an organic creature; his head was rounded and seemed to lack any kind of a neck, his arms beefy, and if his grimacing mouth were open then it would only follow that embers would be belching out of it.

"What the hell are you four doing?" The shredder operator growled, parking his machine. "Can't you see we're chopping wood, here?"

"Dat was one o' my guesses, ja."

The goblin sighed, and Xan was only mildly surprised when a plume of smoke actually did escape his mouth. "Sonny, I've been working for Warsong Lumber since before Hellscream died. He hired me! I have never once been given lip like that, and now that you know who I am, I doubt I ever will again."

"Depends if joo give us more crap," Xan replied. "Where be da lumber camp?"

"I don't answer to you!" The goblin scoffed. "If you really want to know, then fight me for it. This shredder's been with me since before –"

"Hellscream died, right," Melchiah muttered, nodding solemnly. "Xan, I can hear the lumber camp. It's over there." The Forsaken warrior stepped forward and beckoned for them to follow.

"Ja…me too."

"Hey!" The operator shrieked. "Never have I been ignored, in all my years working in Ashenvale!"

"All three of 'em, huh?" As they passed the idle shredder, Melchiah appeared to trip on a root and steadied himself against the machine's leg. Only when they were almost out of earshot did they hear the goblin screaming and cursing; some rubbish about his trusty shredder falling apart before his eyes.

The group soon found themselves staring down the World's Second Largest Buzzsaw (the First Largest being mounted on the roof of the Sunrock Retreat inn, still stained with human blood and serving as a constant reminder that the Horde will not tolerate xenophobes). Beyond all the laboring, half-dead orcs – some with arrow shafts sticking out of various body parts – a group of healthier, more heroic-looking Horde were crowded around an orc that was taller than most.

As Xan and company drew closer, they found that he was not taller, but that he was standing on a tree stump, and was in fact one of the shortest orcs any of them had ever seen. Behind him, a Horde banner was stretched out like a backdrop and he waited with his hands behind his back. The orc was stiff as a board; if he moved, the metric ton of badges on his armor would likely pull him down.

"Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his clan. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his clan. Men, all this stuff you've heard about the Horde not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. The Horde traditionally loves to fight. All real Horde love the sting of battle. When you were young, you all admired the champion axe thrower, the fastest raider, the big bad son-of-a-bitch with all the swords and beads around his neck. The Horde loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser. The Horde plays to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for an orc who lost and laughed. That's why the Horde has never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to the Horde."

Xan'Jin couldn't help but laugh at this last point.

"You are all here today to win one thing, one thing in particular. You are here to steal the flag smack-dab from the center of the Silverwings' fortress, and bring it back to Lucky Forward. DO YOU ALL UNDERSTAND ME?"

The Horde soldiers all roared and slammed their weapons into the ground. Melchiah shook his head piteously.

"…what?" Zuridan looked between Xan and Melchiah. "I thought we were fighting a war, not playing a game of capture the flag." This remark only caused steam to hiss from Melchiah's teeth.

"Artichoke Company! I want you to double-time it along the southwestern side of the gulch – hug the wall like it's your goddamn shield. Babka Company, fall in behind Artichoke and keep those purple bastards pinned in their graveyard. Chocolate, head straight down the middle and keep the exit safe for Fondue Company. Doughnut and Éclair, you will be assisting Fondue in capturing…"

"Somebody throw something at him," Melchiah growled. Argam, being always eager to throw anything at anyone, hurled his backpack full of rare and unusually heavy stones that he had been collecting from different parts of the world. The bag struck the orc on his temple, sending him sprawling backwards and into the waiting arms of the Horde flag. Melchiah trudged up to the stump and took the orc commander's place.

"Listen, this is crap. I don't know what the hell you're doing playing games with the Alliance, but if you all keep me covered, I can tear the whole fortress down in a matter of seconds. You all got me?"

Dumbstruck silence told him that they understood perfectly.

"Somebody move Commander Hemorrhoids to where he won't get in the way."

"That's General Pa'tan…" the orc rumbled groggily.

A troll moved to drag away Pa'tan, and cast his confusion on their new leader, who looked on without remorse.

"We're waitin' for reinforcements – us an' da elves. We playin' a game to pass da time."

"Well, now I'm the reinforcements," Melchiah replied, tapping his foot impatiently. "And I'm telling you to get this war started again."

High Priestess Luna Earthwindfire couldn't stop it. It was like a tsunami, brutal and relentless in its conquest. There was nothing she could do. Before she knew it, she was grinning ear to pointy ear. She had always been taught not to laugh in the face of her enemies, to treat everyone (including those disgusting orcs) with a certain measure of respect before hitting them in the head with something deadly. This, however, was too much for even Luna's noble upbringing.

There was no organization. The knot of Horde soldiers was less coherent than a rioting mob. They were charging down the middle of the gulch, a tiny swarm of brown and blue and green blobs from her vantage point. Two such blobs, a little blue one and a big brown one, even veered off and hid behind a supply shed before coming into range of her archers.

A single soldier stood out to her, a Forsaken with tattered golden armor, feathery midnight hair, and a severe deficit in skin. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and as chaotic as their battle formation was, the Horde seemed to gravitate around him.

Three volleys of arrows later, the Horde reached the entrance to Silverwing Hold. As if he had already won, the Forsaken leapt out and grabbed onto the wall of the fortress. Luna raised an eyebrow, expecting some dramatic shift in the battle to take place, maybe something special about the Forsaken she had overlooked.

Then High Priestess Luna Earthwindfire remembered that they had recently coated Silverwing Hold in a resin that warded off curses, and judging from the astonished look on the Forsaken below her, that was his trump card. Luna allowed herself to smile a little bit more.

After lunch, Melchiah was pulling an arrow out of his eye socket when Xan hatched an idea. However, this plan was shot down as soon as Melchiah heard the words 'disguise ourselves as Night Elves' and they were back to square one with less than half their previous fighting force.

"Well…" Zuridan began. "We could build a giant wooden – "

"No!" Melchiah roared. "I know where you're going with that. Just…no."

"I could tailor some more dresses," Argam offered.

"I don't think that would…more dresses?" Melchiah queried. Xan jerked his head in the direction of General Pa'tan, who was wearing a diaphanous purple dress and inspecting himself in the reflection on the World's Second Largest Buzzsaw.

"He been losin' it since Argam hit 'im wit da rocks."

However, Melchiah was no longer paying attention. He was staring at the buzzsaw with a singular intensity, waiting for someone to ask what he was thinking. When nobody did, he decided to skip that part.

"I'm thinking that buzzsaw could do a hell of a lot of damage to that fortress…"

"Nobody asked what you were thinking," Zuridan pointed out.

"Xan, you told me you know explosives."

"Sorta."

"Do you think if we tie that saw onto the front of Lucky Forward – nevermind why it's called that – and rig some explosives behind it, we could blast the thing across the gulch and into the Silverwings' fortress?"

"Ja, but…"

"Sweet. Get to work on that."

"What about –"

"All the materials you need are over there. Ask one of the orcs."

Xan knew this was one of those situations where Fate did not want his point to get across, so he set off for the orcs to ask where the dynamite was and to tell them to evacuate any valuables from Lucky Forward before they would be effectively demolishing it.

Orders are orders.

High Priestess Luna Earthwindfire, ever the clever strategist, liked to play the waiting game. Even as her opponents rigged what looked like a massive deadly projectile onto the front of the Warsong Lumber Camp (which her enemy Pa'tan insistently called Lucky Forward), Luna did not strike. She was always in favor of waiting things out, because it meant less work in the long run. Someone as perfect as her shouldn't have to work, or so they said.

Luna wasn't sure who 'they' were. It probably had something to do with her family, but they weren't perfect enough for her to bother with them.

There's that 'they' word again.

Now that the massive deadly projectile was in place and the blue speck had nearly finished tacking red dots onto the wall behind it, Luna decided it was the time to get off her perfectly-shaped ass and start working.

However, she had barely left her lawn chair on top of Silverwing Hold when a sharpboom filled the air, and Lucky Forward was blown away like a sand castle against a strong wind. Out of the smoke, the massive deadly projectile zoomed toward Silverwing Hold. Luna Earthwindfire leapt and grabbed onto a hanging tree limb just as the buzzsaw impacted with the front of the hold. The saw imbedded itself in the stone; suspended in midair, wavering precariously. Then, the shockwave hit and the whole joint came apart at the seams.

Luna couldn't believe her beautiful glowing eyes – she had just lost the battle of Warsong Gulch without so much as a return fire. Hastily, she clambered up the limb and headed for Astranaar, busily thinking of an excuse to give to High Command.

Xan tried to celebrate, he tried to make the best out of the situation. However, not a single high-five was reciprocated as the dust that used to be the Warsong Lumber Camp settled on their skin. The shockwave had apparently knocked some sense back into General Pa'tan, who rushed up to Xan and began slamming his palm against the troll's back – a gesture which Xan wasn't sure how to interpret.

"Son, that was the ballsiest, shit-kickingest, son-of-a-goddamn-bitchingest…" Pa'tan had a stroke before he could finish the sentence.

"Let's go, before they tally their losses," Melchiah beckoned, leading his cadre out of the gulch and back the way they came. Within minutes, they were lost and unwittingly following the trail of one High Priestess Luna Earthwindfire.

End

AN: I pray all my Patton references didn't go unnoticed. The next chapter should be longer, so look forward to it.