World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm Page 0,32
his head and laughed loudly, startling some crows resting in a nearby tree into cawing angrily and flapping away in a flurry of black wings to a quieter perch.
“We are coming off wars with the Lich King and nightmares themselves,” Thrall said. “Our people are starving, thirsting, and reverting to barbarism. The king of Stormwind thinks me a brute, and the elements turn deaf ears to my pleas for understanding. And you speak of mates and children?”
The old orc was completely unruffled. “What better time? Thrall, everything is unsettled now. Including your place as warchief of the Horde. You have no mate, no child, no one to carry on your blood if you were suddenly to join the ancestors. You have not even seemed interested in such a thing.”
Thrall growled, “I have had more on my mind than dalliances and getting a mate with child,” he said.
“As I say … those reasons are precisely why that is so important. Too—there is a comfort and a clarity to be found in the arms of one’s true mate that can be found nowhere else. The heart never soars as high as when listening to the laughter of one’s children. These are things you have put aside for perhaps too long—things that I have known, though they were taken from me. I would not trade that knowing for anything else in this or any other life.”
“I need no lecture,” Thrall grumbled.
Eitrigg shrugged. “Perhaps that is true. Perhaps it is you who needs to speak, not I. Thrall, you are troubled. I am old, and I have learned much. And one of those things I have learned is how to listen.”
He slogged into the water, his wolf following. Thrall stood for a moment, then followed. When they reached the shore, both orcs swung onto the backs of their wolf mounts and said nothing more. They rode in silence for a while, and Thrall collected his thoughts.
There was something he had not shared with anyone, not even Eitrigg. He might have shared it with Drek’Thar, had that shaman still been in possession of his faculties. As it was, though, Thrall had kept it to himself, a cold knot of a fearful secret. Inwardly, he was at war with himself.
At last, after they had ridden for some time, he spoke. “You may understand after all, Eitrigg. You, too, have had interaction with humans that has been more than slaughter. I straddle two worlds. I was raised by humans, but born an orc, and I have gleaned strength from both. I know both. That knowledge was power, once. I can say without boasting that it made me a unique leader, with unique skills, able to work with two sides at a time when unity had been utterly vital to the survival of all of Azeroth.
“My heritage served me, and through my leadership, the Horde, very well then. But … I cannot help but wonder … does it still serve them now?”
Eitrigg kept his eyes on the road before him and merely grunted, indicating that Thrall should continue.
“I want to care for my people, provide for them, keep them safe so that they can turn their attention to their families and rituals.” Thrall smiled a little. “To finding mates and getting children. To the things all thinking beings have a right to. To not have to constantly see their parents or children going off to war and never returning. And those who still spoil for battle do not see what I do—the Horde population now consists largely of children and elders. A whole generation almost entirely lost.”
He sensed the weariness in his voice, and Eitrigg obviously did, too, for he said, “You sound … soul sick, my friend. It is not like you to so doubt yourself, or to fall so far into despair.”
Thrall sighed. “It seems most of my thoughts are dark these days. The betrayal in Northrend—Jaina cannot imagine how stunned, how shocked I was. It took all my skill to keep the Horde from splintering afterward. These new fighters—they have cut their warrior’s tusks on slaughtering undead, and that is a very different thing from attacking a living, breathing foe, who has family and friends, who laughs and cries. It is easy for them to become inured to violence, and harder for me to temper them with arguments that call for understanding and perhaps even compassion.”
Eitrigg nodded. “I once walked away from the Horde because I grew sickened by their love of violence. I see