“Like the Cataclysm,” Baine murmured.
The aptly named molten giants were seemingly reveling in destruction. They strode about, towering over both Horde and Alliance, swinging their arms and smashing whatever had the misfortune to be in their way.
Baine had seen enough. “Retreat!” he cried. “Retreat! Fall back, tauren of Mulgore!” He had honored his word and brought his braves into battle. They had fought with courage. He had fulfilled his obligation to Garrosh and would not stand by and watch a single one of his people fall to these monsters in the name of the warchief’s foolish—and dangerous—arrogance.
“Behold and die!” The Horde took up the cry, their bloodlust renewed by something approaching giddy gleefulness.
The Alliance defenders, as Garrosh predicted, were defeated in that moment. They were terrified by nearly a dozen molten-rock monsters that were bearing down on them. Many fell beneath a simple footfall. Others died as, with an almost casual blow, the remaining walls were reduced to rubble.
“Stand firm, Alliance soldiers!” The cry came from one of the towers. Laughing softly, Malkorok glanced up to see the human, wearing an admiral’s hat, desperately and futilely attempting to rally his troops. It was foolish, but Malkorok could not help but respect the doomed human. He, at least, would die with honor.
But most of those he commanded were fleeing. And Malkorok could not blame them. It was, after all, what Garrosh had counted on.
Terrified beyond thought, the majority had simply flung down their weapons and raced for the safety of the water or the hills. Anywhere but here, facing death from creatures made of liquid rock and hatred. The fleeing soldiers made easy prey for the Horde fighters who were waiting at all the exits. Almost too easy. If any survived, Malkorok mused, they would have to count themselves among the luckiest of beings.
Malkorok continued to charge at the Alliance soldiers seeking escape. They were too frightened to even fight well, and he cut them down swiftly. After a few moments, he realized there was no more activity in the immediate area. What Alliance members he could see lay very still. He looked around, eyes narrowed, for any pockets of fighting. There was none. Even so, the molten giants continued to march, bellowing and slamming at the remains of the walls, smashing the mighty cannons and other engines of war like so much kindling.
Malkorok spied Garrosh standing over the body of a worgen. Its head lay a yard away, its lupine features locked in a snarl but its eyes wide with fear. Garrosh turned to the Blackrock orc, his face and body spattered with blood, and smiled fiercely around his tusks.
“Well?” he demanded.
“We have won, my warchief!” said Malkorok. “I see no Alliance other than corpses.”
Garrosh’s grin widened and he threw back his head, spread his arms, and let forth a mighty howl of triumph. “Victory to the Horde! Victory to the Horde!”
The cry was picked up and repeated, sweeping like wildfire through the troops. Malkorok noticed that the molten giants slowed, then stopped, and he realized that the dark shaman who had summoned them had also heard the happy shouts of victory and were now sending the earth elementals back to whence they had come.
Or… attempting to.
The molten giants, it seemed, had no wish to lose this form. They turned slowly, small heads with glowing red eyes moving as they sought their “masters.” Grunting, they began to surge forward.
Malkorok and Garrosh looked about for the dark-clad forms, who were gesticulating with a vigor that bordered on frantic. For a moment, elementals and shaman were locked in a struggle of wills. Then, as one, the molten giants opened their mouths to let out a chilling cry of both rage and defeat.
The earth itself replied.
Malkorok felt the ground beneath him tremble, slightly at first, then with more intensity. Alarmed, he glanced about, but there was no shelter, not here. There were only corpses, and weapons, and rubble where a hold had once stood. Shouts of warning filled the air as many lost their footing, falling hard on the earth and clinging to it even though it was now the enemy. Suddenly dark clouds gathered. Lightning flashed, and a nearly deafening crack of thunder followed immediately.
The mouths of the molten giants kept opening, wider, wider still, as their heads and shoulders started to melt and dissolve. The elemental beings lost cohesion, their limbs flowing back into a single mass. The color faded, cooled, becoming first dark red, then brown, as the elementals shrank back to their original forms—now merely boulders, nothing more.
A final buck and shudder from the earth, and then it was still. The silence pressed like cotton on Malkorok’s ears, hot from the noise that had assaulted them. The Horde members who had fallen to the earth got to their feet, cautiously, and then cheers filled the air once again.
“We have not only defeated the Alliance,” said Garrosh, stepping beside Malkorok and clapping him on the back, “we have shown our mastery over the very elements!”
“What you have shown,” said a deep, rumbling voice that was rich and cold with fury, “is that you are reckless, Garrosh Hellscream!”
Both orcs whirled to see Baine Bloodhoof and one of his shaman. Baine was in full war regalia, his face decorated, but not with war paint. His armor, too, was spattered with blood. But he was not reveling in victory.
Baine continued. “Kador Cloudsong tells me that the Earthen Ring has specifically forbidden the sort of thing you have meddled with, Hellscream.”
Malkorok frowned. “You will address him as ‘warchief,’” the Blackrock orc said in a low voice.
“Very well. Warchief,” said Baine, “your choice to use these—these molten giants is an offense to the Earth Mother and to the Horde you claim to lead! Do you not understand what you are doing? Did you not feel the angry wrath of the earth itself? You could bring about a second Cataclysm. By the ancestors, did you learn nothing from the first one?”
“I have made the Cataclysm work in our favor!” shouted Garrosh. “This”—and he stabbed a finger at the rubble that had once been Northwatch Hold—“is the first major step toward complete and utter conquest of this continent! Theramore falls next, and I will use whatever tool I need to in order to achieve these goals, tauren!”
“You will not endanger—”
Malkorok grabbed Baine’s arm and shoved his face up toward the tauren’s. “Silence! You serve at the warchief’s whim, Baine Bloodhoof! Do you offer him insult? Do you? Because if you do, I challenge you to a mak’gora!”
He was seething and prayed that the tauren would accept the challenge. This Bloodhoof, like his father before him, had long been a thorn in the side of the orcs. The tauren as a whole were too soft, too pacifistic, and the Bloodhoof were the worst. Malkorok considered Cairne’s death to be a good thing, regardless of how it had happened. He would deem it an honor to put Baine Bloodhoof out of Garrosh’s misery.
Baine’s eyes flickered with fury; then he growled low. “I have lost many braves today, obeying the warchief’s word. I have no desire to lose any more Horde lives needlessly.” He turned to Garrosh. “I speak only from concern for what may come. You know that, Warchief.”
Garrosh nodded. “Your… concern is noted but unwarranted. I know what I am doing. I know what my shaman can handle. These are my methods, High Chieftain. My next step will be to march on Theramore. There, I will cut off the Alliance supply line to Kalimdor and destroy the Proudmoore bitch, who confuses diplomacy with meddling. I have plans for Feathermoon Stronghold, Teldrassil, the Moonglade, Lor’danel, too—all will fall. And then, you will see. You will see how things stand.”
He laughed. “And when you do, I will accept your apology graciously. Until then”—Garrosh sobered—“I will hear no more word from you about any ‘concerns.’ Do we understand each other?”