World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm Page 0,74

bring it again now, to formally show my desire for healing and unity.”

Renferal watched closely, nodding her green head quietly. Then she reached in her own bags and brought forth a cup and a waterskin.

“It seems you and I are of the same mind,” she said quietly, lifting the cup. It was a simple, ceramic goblet. It had been glazed blue, and runes were etched on it, but otherwise it was unadorned. Hamuul smiled softly. Long ago, she had brought this, as he had the pipe. “This cup is ancient. We do not know its original owner, but it has survived since the Sundering, passed down from hand to hand with love and care. The water is from the Temple of Elune. It is pure and delicious.” She poured some water into the goblet reverently, then she, too, rose and set it in the center.

Hamuul nodded, pleased. The night elves were taking this meeting as seriously as the tauren were. He could feel the tension start to die, feel respect and hope start to replace resistance and antagonism.

He rose, bowed to Renferal, and bent to pick up the pipe. As he filled it with herbs, he began to speak.

“Once lit, the pipe will be passed around from person to person,” he explained for the benefit of those younger night elf druids who had never seen the tauren ceremony before. “Please, when it reaches you, hold it for a moment. Think of what you wish to achieve here. Then bring it to—”

He froze.

The breeze had shifted, carrying to his sensitive tauren nose a scent. Strong, familiar, not unpleasant at any other time, but he knew that now, at this delicate juncture, it could spell the death of everything.

Orcs.

“No! Hold!” cried Hamuul in the orc’s native tongue, but it was too late. Even before the words had left his mouth, the deadly arrows sang out on their lethal flight. Two night elves dropped, throats neatly pierced.

Cries of rage and alarm from tauren and night elf erupted. Renferal whirled for just an instant to affix Hamuul with a stare of fury and loathing that pierced his heart as surely as any spear.

“We came in good faith!” was all she said before she transformed into a cat and launched herself on the nearest orc, a huge, bald, snaggle-toothed warrior with a giant two-handed sword. He fell beneath her, his sword knocked from his hand and lying useless in the grass as her claws laid open his abdomen.

“Get the purple skins!” cackled their leader. Where had they come from? Why? Was this Garrosh’s doing? It didn’t matter. By accident or design, the peace conference had been destroyed beyond imagining. All that was left to Hamuul was to protect the three—no, he amended as another orc impaled Renferal with a polearm, pinning her to the earth—two night elf druids who still survived.

Surrendering to his anger and pain, he shifted quickly into bear form, and lunged for the nearest orc in this barbaric war party. His fellow tauren did likewise, each of them changing into various bestial forms. The orc female, brandishing two shortswords, never stood a chance against Hamuul’s bulk. Her cry was cut short as his weight crushed her ribcage. He wanted to clamp his massive jaws down on her throat, crunch her windpipe, taste the coppery flavor of her blood, but he restrained himself. He was better than they.

All around him the druids were shifting into various forms to defend themselves—storm crow, diving and slicing at the orcish faces with razor-sharp talons; cat, with teeth and claws to rend and tear; and bear, the strongest of the bestial forms. Blood spattered everywhere, and the scent of it drove Hamuul almost mad. He hung onto his sanity by the barest of threads, remembering why he had come here, how close they had been to the dream of peace a few short, violent, minutes ago.

“Hold, hold, these are tauren!” came a cry, piercing the red haze of battle. Summoning every bit of restraint he possessed, Hamuul leaped off the orc he was fighting and reverted to his true shape.

Belatedly he realized he had been injured; in bear form, he had not felt the wound. He pressed a hand to the gash in his side and murmured a healing spell, his eyes widening in horror as he assessed what had happened.

It seemed almost impossible to him, but all five night elves were slain and lay where they had fallen. Almost all the tauren had been wounded, and