Doomhammer reached out to Thrall, and Thrall grasped the b.l.o.o.d.y, armored hand with his own. "You know what to do. They are in your care now. I could not . . . have hoped for a better heir. Your father would be so proud . . . help me. . . ."

With hands that trembled, Thrall turned to a.s.sist the two younger orcs in removing, piece by piece, the armor that had always been a.s.sociated with Orgrim Doomhammer. But the lance that still protruded from Orgrim's back would not permit the removal of the rest of the armor.

"That is the second thing," growled Doomhammer. There was a small crowd cl.u.s.tered around the fallen hero, and more were coming up every moment. "It is shame enough that I die from a coward's strike,"

he said. "I will not leave my life with this piece of human treachery still in my body." One hand went to the point of the lance. The fingers fluttered weakly, and the hand fell. "I have tried to pull it out myself, but I lack the strength. . . . Hurry, Thrall. Do this for me."

Thrall felt as though his chest were being crushed by an unseen hand. He nodded. Steeling himself against the pain that he knew he would need to cause his friend and mentor, he closed his armored fingers about the tip, pressing into Doomhammer's flesh.

Doomhammer cried out, in anger as much as in pain. "Pull!" he cried.

Closing his eyes, Thrall pulled. The blood-soaked shaft came forward a few inches. The sound that Doomhammer made almost broke Thrall's heart.

"Again!" the mighty warrior cried. Thrall took a deep breath and pulled, willing himself to remove the entire shaft this time. It came free with such suddenness that he stumbled backward.

Black-red blood now gushed freely from the fatal hole in Doomhammer's belly. Standing beside Thrall, h.e.l.lscream whispered, "I saw it happen. It was before you caused the horses to desert their masters. He was single-handedly battling eight of them, all on horseback. It was the bravest thing I have ever seen."

Thrall nodded dumbly, then knelt beside Doomhammer's side. "Great leader," whispered Thrall, so that only Doomhammer could hear, "I am afraid. I am not worthy to wear your armor and wield your weapon."

"No one breathes who is worthier," said Doomhammer in a soft, wet voice. "You will lead them . . . to victory . . . and you will lead them . . . to peace. . . ."

The eyes closed, and Doomhammer fell forward onto Thrall. Thrall caught him, and held him close for a long moment. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Drek'Thar, who slipped a hand beneath Thrall's arm and helped him rise.

"They are watching," Drek'Thar said to Thrall, speaking very softly. "They must not lose heart. You must put on the armor at once, and show them that they have a new chieftain."

"Sir," said one of the orcs who had overheard Drek'Thar's words, "the armor. . . ." He swallowed.

"The plate that was pierced - it will need to be replaced."

"No," said Thrall. "It will not. Before the next battle you will hammer it back into shape, but I will keep the plate. In honor of Orgrim Doomhammer, who gave his life to free his people."

He stood and let them place the armor on, grieving privately but publicly showing a brave face. The gathered crowd watched, hushed and reverent. Drek'Thar's advice had been sound; this was the right thing to do. He bent, picked up the enormous hammer, and swung it over his head.

"Orgrim Doomhammer has named me Warchief," he cried. "It is a t.i.tle I would not have sought, but I have no choice. I have been named, and so I will obey. Who will follow me to lead our people to freedom?"

A cry rose up, raw and filled with grief for the pa.s.sing of their leader. Yet it was a sound of hope as well, and as Thrall stood, bearing aloft the famous weapon of Doomhammer, he knew in his heart that, despite the odds, victory would indeed be theirs.

SEVENTEEN.

It was raw with grief and fueled by anger that Thrall marched up to where Langston fought against the implacable tree roots in a desperate attempt to sit up.

He shrank back when Thrall arrived, wearing the legendary black plate mail and towering over him. His eyes were wide with fear.

"I should kill you," said Thrall, darkly. The image of Doomhammer dying in front of his eyes was still fresh in his mind.

Langston licked his red, full lips. "Mercy, Lord Thrall," he begged.

Thrall dropped to one knee and shoved his face within inches of Langston's. "And when did you show me mercy?" he roared. Langston winced at the sound. "When did you intervene to say, 'Blackmoore, perhaps you've beaten him enough,' or 'Blackmoore, he did the best he could'? When did such words ever cross your lips?"

"I wanted to," said Langston.

"Right now you believe those words," said Thrall, rising again to his full height and staring down at his captive. "But I have no doubt that you never truly felt that way. Let us dispense with lies. Your life has value to me - for the moment. If you tell me what I want to know, I will release you and the other prisoners and let you return to your dog of a master." Langston looked doubtful. "You have my word,"

Thrall added.

"Of what worth is the word of an orc?" Langston said, rallying for a moment.

"Why, it's worth your pathetic life, Langston. Though I'll grant you, that is not worth much. Now, tell me. How did you know which camp we would be attacking? Is there a spy in our midst?"

Langston looked like a sullen child and refused to answer. Thrall formed a thought, and the tree roots tightened about Langston's body. He gasped and stared up at Thrall in shock.

"Yes," said Thrall, "the very trees obey my command. As do all the elements." Langston didn't need to know about the give-and-take relationship a shaman had with the spirits. Let him a.s.sume Thrall had complete control. "Answer my question."

"No spy," grunted Langston. He was having difficulty breathing due to the root across his chest. Thrall asked that it be loosened, and the tree complied. "Blackmoore has put a group of knights at all the remaining camps."

"So that no matter where we struck, we would encounter his men." Langston nodded. "Hardly a good use of resources, but it appears to have worked this time. What else can you tell me? What is Blackmoore doing to ensure my recovery? How many troops does he have? Or will that root creep up to your throat?"

The root in question gently stroked Langston's neck. Langston's resistance shattered like a gla.s.s goblet dropped on a stone floor. Tears welled up in his eyes and he began to sob. Thrall was disgusted, but not enough that he didn't pay close attention to Langston's words. The knight blurted out numbers, dates, plans, even the fact that Blackmoore's drinking was beginning to affect his judgment.

"He desperately wants you back, Thrall," snuffled Langston, peering up at Thrall with red-rimmed eyes.

"You were the key to everything."

Instantly alert, Thrall demanded, "Explain." As the confining roots fell away from his body, Langston appeared heartened, and even more eager to tell everything he knew.

"The key to everything," he repeated. "When he found you, he knew that he could use you. First as a gladiator, but as so much more than that." He wiped his wet face and tried to recover as much of his lost dignity as he could. "Didn't you wonder why he taught you how to read? Gave you maps, taught you Hawks and Hares and strategy?"

Thrall nodded, tense and expectant.

"It was because he eventually wanted you to lead an army. An army of orcs."

Anger flooded Thrall. "You are lying. Why would Blackmoore want me to lead his rivals?"

"But they - you - wouldn't be rivals," said Langston. "You would lead an army of orcs against the Alliance."

Thrall gaped. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He had known Blackmoore was a cruel, conniving b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but this . . . It was treachery on a staggering level, against his own kind! Surely this was a lie. But Langston appeared to be in dire earnest, and once the shock had worn off, Thrall realized that to Blackmoore it would make a great deal of sense.

"You were the best of both worlds," Langston continued. "The power and strength and bloodl.u.s.t of an orc, combined with the intelligence and strategic knowledge of a human. You would command the orcs and they would be invincible."

"And Aedelas Blackmoore would be Lieutenant General no longer, but . . . what? King? Absolute monarch? Lord of all?"

Langston nodded furiously. "You can't imagine what he's been like since you escaped. It's been hard on all of us."

"Hard?" snarled Thrall. "I was beaten and kicked and made to think that I was less than nothing! I faced death nearly every day in the arena. I and my people are battling for our very lives. We are fighting for freedom.That , Langston, that is hard. Do not speak to me of pain and difficulty, for you have known precious little of either."

Langston fell silent and Thrall pondered what he had just learned. It was a bold and audacious strategy, but then again, whatever his many faults, Aedelas Blackmoore was a bold and audacious man. Thrall had learned a little, here and there, about the Blackmoore family's disgrace. Aedelas had always been eager to wipe the blot from his name, but perhaps the stain went deep. Perhaps it went all the way to the bone - or to the heart.

Why, though, if Blackmoore's aim had ultimately been to win Thrall's complete loyalty, had he not been treated better? Memories floated into Thrall's mind that he had not recalled in years: an amusing game of Hawks and Hares with a laughing Blackmoore; a plateful of sweets sent down from the kitchens after a particularly fine battle; an affectionate hand placed on a huge shoulder when Thrall had conquered a particularly tricky strategic problem.

Blackmoore had always aroused many feelings in Thrall. Fear, adoration, hatred, contempt. But for the first time, Thrall realized that, in many ways, Blackmoore deserved his pity. At the time, Thrall had not known why it was that sometimes Blackmoore was open and jovial, his voice clipped and erudite, and sometimes he was brutal and nasty, his voice slurred and unnaturally loud. Now, he understood; the bottle had gotten its talons as firmly into Blackmoore as an eagle's sank into a hare. Blackmoore was a man torn between embracing a legacy of treachery and overcoming it, of being a brilliant strategist and fighter and being a cowardly, vicious bully. Blackmoore had probably treated Thrall as well as he knew how.

The rage left Thrall. He felt terribly sorry for Blackmoore but the feeling changed nothing. He still was driven to liberate the encampments, and aid the orcs in rediscovering the power of their heritage.

Blackmoore stood in the way, an obstacle that would need to be eliminated.

He looked back down at Langston, who sensed the change in him and gave him a smile that looked more like a grimace.

"I keep my word," Thrall said. "You and your men will go free. You will leave, now. With no weapons, no food, no mounts. You will be followed, but you will not see who follows you; and if you speak of an ambush, or attempt any kind of attack, you will die. Is this understood?"

Langston nodded. With a jerk of his head, Thrall indicated that he could leave. Langston needed no second urging. He scrambled to his feet and bolted. Thrall watched him and the other disarmed knights fleeing into the darkness. He looked up into the trees and saw the owl he had sensed staring back down at him with lambent eyes. The night bird hooted softly.

Follow them, my friend, if you will. Report back to me at once if they plan action against us.

With a rustle of wings, the owl sprang from the branch and began to follow the fleeing men. Thrall sighed deeply. Now that the keyed-up energy that had supported him through this long, b.l.o.o.d.y night was fading, he realized that he himself had suffered injuries and was exhausted. But these things could be tended to later. There was a more important duty to perform.

It took the rest of the night to gather and prepare the bodies, and by morning, black smoke was curling thickly into the blue skies. Thrall and Drek'Thar had asked the Spirit of Fire to burn more quickly than was its usual wont, so it would not take nearly as long for the bodies to be reduced to ashes, and those ashes given to Spirit of Air to scatter as it saw fit.

The largest and most decorated pyre was reserved for the most n.o.ble of them all. It took Thrall, h.e.l.lscream, and two others to lift Orgrim Doomhammer's ma.s.sive corpse onto the pyre. Reverently, Drek'Thar anointed Doomhammer's nearly naked body with oils, murmuring words that Thrall could not hear. Sweet scents rose up from the body. Drek'Thar indicated that Thrall join him, and together they posed the body in an att.i.tude of defiance. Dead fingers were folded and discreetly tied about a ruined sword. At Doomhammer's feet were laid the corpses of other brave warriors who had died in battle - the fierce, loyal white wolves who had not been swift enough to elude the humans' weapons. One lay at Doomhammer's feet, two more on each side, and across his chest, in a place of honor, was the grizzled, courageous Wise-ear. Drek'Thar patted his old friend one last time, then he and Thrall stepped back.

Thrall expected Drek'Thar to say whatever words might be appropriate, but instead h.e.l.lscream nudged Thrall. Uncertainly, Thrall addressed the crowd who gathered, hushed, about their former chieftain's corpse.

"I have not been long in the company of my own people," Thrall began. "I do not know the traditions of the afterlife. But this I know: Doomhammer died as bravely as it is possible for any orc to die. He fought in battle, trying to liberate his imprisoned kin. Surely, he will regard us with favor, as we honor him now in death as we all honored him in life." He looked over at the dead orc's face. "Orgrim Doomhammer, you were my father's best friend. I could not hope to know a n.o.bler being. Speed to whatever joyous place and purpose await you."

With that, he closed his eyes and asked the Spirit of Fire to take the hero. Immediately, the fire burnt more swiftly and with more heat than Thrall had ever experienced. The body would soon be consumed, and the sh.e.l.l that had housed the fiery spirit called in this world Orgrim Doomhammer would soon be no more.

But what he had stood for, what he had died for, would never be forgotten.

Thrall tilted his head back and bellowed a deep cry. One by one, others joined him, screaming their pain and pa.s.sion. If there were indeed ancestral spirits, even they must have been impressed by the volume of the lamentation raised for Orgrim Doomhammer.

Once the rite was done, Thrall sat heavily down beside Drek'Thar and h.e.l.lscream. h.e.l.lscream, too, had suffered injuries which he, like Thrall, simply chose to bear stoically for the moment. Drek'Thar had been expressly forbidden to be anywhere near the fighting, though he served loyally and well by tending to the injured. If anything happened to Thrall, Drek'Thar was the only shaman among them, and far too precious a resource to risk losing. He was not yet so old that the order didn't vex him, however.

"What encampment is next, my Warchief ?" said h.e.l.lscream respectfully. Thrall winced at the term. He was still getting used to the fact that Doomhammer was gone, that he was now in charge of hundreds of orcs.

"No more encampments," he said. "Our force is large enough for the present moment."

Drek'Thar frowned. "They suffer," he said.

"They do," Thrall agreed, "but I have a plan to liberate all of them at once. To kill the monster, you must cut off his head, not just his hands and feet. It is time to cut off the head of the internment camp system."

His eyes glittered in the firelight. "We will storm Durnholde."

The next morning, when he announced the plan to the troops, huge cheers greeted him. They were ready, now, to tackle the seat of power. Thrall and Drek'Thar had the elements standing ready to aid them. The orcs were only revitalized by the battle of last night; few of them had fallen, though one was the greatest warrior of them all, and many of the enemy now lay dead around the blasted remains of the encampment. The ravens who circled were grateful for the feast.

They were several days' march away, but food was plentiful and spirits were high. By the time the sun was fully in the sky, the orcish Horde, under their new leader Thrall, was moving steadily and purposefully toward Durnholde.

"Of course I told him nothing," said Langston, sipping Blackmoore's wine. "He captured and tortured me, but I held my tongue, I tell you. Out of admiration, he let me and my men go."

Privately, Blackmoore doubted this, but said nothing. "Tell me more about these feats he performs," he asked.

Happy to regain his mentor's approval, Langston launched into a fabulous tale about roots clutching his body, lightning striking on command, well-trained horses abandoning their masters, and the very earth shattering a stone enclosure. If Blackmoore hadn't heard similar stories from the few men who returned, he would have been inclined to think that Langston had been hitting the bottle even harder than he.

"I was on the right path," Blackmoore mused, taking another gulp of wine. "In capturing Thrall. You see what he is, what he has done with that pathetic bunch of slumping, disheartened greenskins."

It was physically painful to think that he had come so close to manipulating this clearly powerful new Horde. Hard on the heels of that came a mental image of Taretha, and her letters of friendship to his slave. As always, anger mixed with a strange, sharp pain rose in him at the thought. He had let her be, never let her know that he had found the letters. He hadn't even let Langston know about that, and was now profoundly grateful for his wisdom. He believed that Langston had probably babbled everything he knew to Thrall, which necessitated a change of plan.

"I fear others were likely not as staunch as you in the face of torture by orcs, my friend," he said, trying and failing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Fortunately, Langston was so far in his cups that he didn't appear to notice. "We must a.s.sume that the orcs know all that we know, and act accordingly. We must try to think like Thrall. What would be his next move? What is his ultimate goal?"

And how in all the h.e.l.ls there are can I find a way to reclaim him?

Though he was leading an army of nearly two thousand, and it was almost certain to be spotted, Thrall did what he could to disguise the march of the Horde. He asked the earth to cover their prints, the air to carry their scent away from any beasts who might sound the alert. It was little, but every bit helped.

He made the encampment several miles south of Durnholde, in a wild and generally avoided forested area. Together with a small group of scouts, he set off for a certain wooded area directly outside the fortress. Both h.e.l.lscream and Drek'Thar had tried to dissuade him, but he insisted.

"I have a plan," he said, "one that may achieve our goals without undue bloodshed from either side."

EIGHTEEN.

Even on the coldest days of winter, save when there was an active blizzard preventing anyone departing Durnholde, Taretha had gone to visit the lightning-felled tree. And each time she peered into the tree's black depths, she saw nothing.

She enjoyed the return of warmer weather, though the snowmelt-saturated earth sucked on her boots and more than once succeeded in pulling one off. Having to tug her boot free and put it on a second time was a trivial price to pay for the fresh smells of the awakening woods, the shafts of sunlight piercing the darkness of the shadows, and the astounding blaze of color that dotted the meadows and forest floor alike.

Thrall's exploits had been the talk of Durnholde. The conversations served only to increase Blackmoore's drinking. Which, at times, was not a bad thing. More than once she had arrived at his bedchamber and entered quietly, to find the Master of Durnholde asleep on floor, chair, or bed, a bottle somewhere nearby. On those nights, Taretha Foxton breathed a sigh of relief, closed the door, and slept alone in her own small room.

A few days ago, young Lord Langston had returned, with tales that sounded too preposterous to frighten a child still in the nursery. And yet . . . hadn't she read of ancient powers the orcs had once possessed? Powers in harmony with nature, long ago? She knew that Thrall was profoundly intelligent, and it would not at all surprise her to discover that he had learned these ancient arts.

Taretha was approaching the old tree now, and looked into its depths with a casualness born of repet.i.tion.

And gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth as her heart began to pound so fiercely she feared she would faint. There, nestled in a brown-black hollow, was her necklace. It seemed to catch the sunlight and glow like a silver beacon to her. With trembling fingers, she reached for it, grasped it, and then dropped it.

"Clumsy!" she hissed, picking it up again with a slightly steadier hand.

It could be a trick. Thrall could have been captured and the necklace taken from him. It might even have been recognized as hers. But unless Thrall told someone about their compact, who would know to leave it here? She was certain of one thing: n.o.body could break Thrall.

Tears of joy filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She wiped at them with the back of her left hand, the right one still cradling the crescent pendant.

He was here, in these woods, likely hiding in the dragonlike cliffside. He was waiting for her to help him.

Perhaps he was injured. Her hands folded over the necklace and she tucked it inside her dress, carefully out of sight. It would be best if no one saw her "missing" necklace.

Happier than she had been since she had last seen the orc, and yet filled with worry for his safety, Taretha returned to Durnholde.

The day seemed to last forever. She was grateful that the dinner tonight was fish; more than once, she'd gotten ill on poorly prepared fish. The chef at Durnholde had served with Blackmoore in battle over twenty years ago. He had been hired as a reward for his service, not for his cooking.